A Study on the Separability of an Arbitration Clause in United States Cases

미국 판례상 중재조항의 분리가능성에 관한 고찰

The separability of an arbitration clause is generally recognized throughout the world, but there are no provisions of it under the Federal Arbitration Act(FAA) of the United States. As such, the controversy over the recognition of separability has developed with the rise of certain cases. The Supreme Court recognized this separability based on section 4 of the FAA in the decision of the Prima Paint case. The Court ruled that courts must decide the claim about the fraudulent inducement of an arbitration agreement itself, but they must not decide the claim about the fraudulent inducement of a contract involving a broad arbitration clause, and they have to proceed with the arbitration. The Court said that the subject of an arbitral award is set by the agreement of the parties, and thereby arbitrators can decide the issues about the fraudulent inducement of a contract on the basis of the arbitration clause when it is broad to the point of including the issues. Many courts have extended the separability beyond the fraud context to include other defenses to contract formation in the federal courts such as the occurrence of mistake, illegality, and frustration of purpose. In interpreting the parties' intention of ensuring arbitrator competence, the Supreme Court has treated differently the issues about whether the arbitration agreement exists or not and the issues about whether the preconditions for dispute resolution by a valid arbitration agreement is fulfilled or not. The Court holds that the federal policy in favor of arbitration does not apply to the former issues, and arbitrators can decide theses issues only when parties assign them clearly and unmistakably to them. However, the later issues receive a presumption in favor of arbitration; i.e., when the interpretation of a valid arbitration clause is contested, the arbitrators can decide these issues. In the First Options case, the former issue was questioned. The question of the separability of an arbitration clause is where the validity of the main contract involving the arbitration clause is contested. Therefore, the doctrine of separability did not operate in the First Options case in which the validity of the arbitration clause itself was questioned, and the decision in the First Options was irrelevant to the separability. I think that the Prima Paint case and the First Options case have different issues, and there is no tension between them.