1. Can the parties mutually agree to have a court vacate, modify, or correct an award under the FAA when the arbitrator’s conclusions of law are erroneous?
2. What did the Court mean when it stated that “it makes more sense to see the three provisions, §§ 9–11, as substantiating a national policy favoring arbitration with just the limited review needed to maintain arbitration’s essential virtue of resolving disputes straightaway”?

[The dispute involves property owner Hall Street Associates, LLC, and tenant Mattel, Inc., over liability for the cost of environmental cleanup of the property. The parties agreed to arbitrate the matter and entered into a contractual agreement to expand the scope of the judicial review of the arbitrator's award beyond the grounds for vacating or correcting an award set forth in Sections 10 and 11 of the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA). The Court's decision in this case applies the grounds for vacating or correcting arbitration awards under the FAA and is of significance to labor and employment arbitration.]
SOUTER, J.…
The Act … supplies mechanisms for enforcing arbitration awards: a judicial decree confirming an award, an order vacating it, or an order modifying or correcting it. §§ 9-11. An application for any of these orders will get streamlined treatment as a motion, obviating the separate contract action that would usually be necessary to enforce or tinker with an arbitral award in court. § 6. Under the terms of
§ 9, a court "must" confirm an arbitration award "unless" it is vacated, modified, or corrected "as prescribed" in §§ 10 and 11. Section 10 lists grounds for vacating an award, while § 11 names those for modifying or correcting one.

The Courts of Appeals have split over the exclusiveness of these statutory grounds when parties take the FAA shortcut to confirm, vacate, or modify an award, with some saying the recitations are exclusive, and others regarding them as mere threshold provisions open to expansion by agreement…. We now hold that §§ 10 and 11 respectively provide the FAA's exclusive grounds for expedited vacatur and modification.…

Instead of fighting the text, it makes more sense to see the three provisions, §§ 9-11, as substantiating a national policy favoring arbitration with just the limited review needed to maintain arbitration's essential virtue of resolving disputes straightaway. Any other reading opens the door to the full-bore legal and evidentiary appeals that can "rende[r] informal arbitration merely a prelude to a more cumbersome and time-consuming judicial review process," Kyocera, 341 F.3d, at 998; cf. Ethyl Corp. v. United Steelworkers of America, 768 F.2d 180,184 (CA7 1985), and bring arbitration theory to grief in post-arbitration process….

In holding that §§10 and 11 provide exclusive regimes for the review provided by the statute, we do not purport to say that they exclude more searching review based on authority outside the statute as well. The FAA is not the only way into court for parties wanting review of arbitration awards: they may contemplate enforcement under state statutory or common law, for example, where judicial review of different scope is arguable. But here we speak only to the scope of the expeditious judicial review under §§9, 10, and 11, deciding nothing about other possible avenues for judicial enforcement of arbitration awards….
[Remanded.]

[JUSTICES STEVENS, KENNEDY, and BREYER dissented.]