It comes as no surprise that the Solicitor General recommends that this Court deny certiorari. That is now the near-reflexive conclusion to almost every invitation brief. When the Court looks below the surface of that conclusion to the arguments advanced in support, however, it will find that its intervention is plainly warranted.

In particular, the United States rejects Argentina’s attempt to rewrite the ruling below as holding that the parties never agreed to arbitrate. See BIO 1. The Solicitor General recognizes that petitioner properly “submitted the dispute to international arbitration under Article 8 of the Treaty.” U.S. Br. 5. With this conclusion, the United States implicitly concedes that the issue presented is as framed by petitioner: whether the D.C. Circuit’s decision allocating to itself jurisdictional competence over whether preconditions to arbitration have been satisfied can be squared with this Court’s precedents and the decisions of four other circuits.

In nonetheless asserting that the D.C. Circuit’s decision creates no conflict and raises no recurring question, the Solicitor General reasons in two steps. First, he claims that under “settled principles,” U.S. Br. 9, a court asks anew in every case “whether, in entering into the particular” arbitration agreement, the parties intended a court or instead an arbitrator to decide whether a precondition to arbitration has been satisfied, id. 11. Second, he asserts that the D.C. Circuit’s decision turned on two particular facts: that the precondition required litigation and appeared in a treaty. Id. 17-19.