In First Options of Chicago v. Kaplan, 514 U.S. 938 (1995), this Court established that the question whether a valid and binding agreement to arbitrate exists is generally one for the courts to decide, without any deference owed to the arbitrators’ views. In the ruling below, for which BG Group PLC (“Petitioner” or “BG”) now seeks review, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (the “Court of Appeals”) correctly applied that rule and properly concluded that there was no valid agreement binding Respondent, the Republic of Argentina (“Argentina”), to arbitrate.

Thus, this case concerns whether there was an agreement to arbitrate, and not, as BG and amici urge, compliance with conditions precedent or procedural time limits provided by an arbitration agreement whose existence and validity is conceded. Under the relevant bilateral investment treaty, Argentina offered to arbitrate disputes under prescribed terms only with investors who have already litigated in Argentine courts for a period of eighteen months or who have received a final decision from the Argentine courts but remain unsatisfied, whichever is earlier. Unless the investor, a third party beneficiary of the treaty, accepts the offer to arbitrate according to the express terms of that offer, no arbitration agreement can come into existence.

In this case, the Court of Appeals found that BG did not accept Argentina’s offer, and therefore no agreement to arbitrate between BG and Argentina was ever formed. The Court of Appeals’ decision is entirely consistent with this Court’s ruling in First Options, as well as with decisions from other circuits. The Court of Appeals’ decision is also consistent with federal policy regarding arbitration as articulated by this Court under the Federal Arbitration Act, 9 U.S.C. §§ 1-16 (the “FAA”), which uniformly emphasizes that arbitration is, above all, a matter of contract, and seeks to ensure that no party is forced to arbitrate when it did not agree to do so. The Court should therefore deny BG’s Petition for a Writ of Certiorari (“Petition” or “Pet.”).