Arbitration Day at Supreme Court: Will ‘Super Statute’ Prevail?

The conservative majority hasn’t lost its appetite for defining the contours of arbitration law, two cases that will be argued at the U.S. Supreme Court Oct. 29 show.

An antitrust issue underlies one case, and a workplace data breach underlies the other. But both turn on questions of how to interpret contracts under the Federal Arbitration Act.

In the view of the majority justices, the FAA functions as a “super statute,” plaintiffs’ attorney Deepak Gupta told Bloomberg Law. “It eats other statutes in its path, and it has real sweep.”

These cases and a third already argued show that the ...