[dctoedt]

> The legislature passed the federal arbitration act almost 100 years ago. It was signed into law by the president. And it has been consistently upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in the face of many and varied court challenges.

The Federal Arbitration Act was enacted to validate B2B arbitration agreements: before then, and also for a considerable time thereafter, many courts were hostile to arbitration agreements — because, it's thought, judges didn't want private arbitrators encroaching on the judges' turf [0]. Also, when the FAA was enacted, consumers and employees generally didn't enter into contracts. The "scope creep" of the FAA has been due largely to the Supreme Court's literal interpretation of the Act, giving it priority over all contrary state statutes and practically any other federal statute that doesn't expressly state otherwise.

[0] See, e.g., http://scholarship.law.missouri.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti... (a somewhat-passionate review of the history that generally comports with my own understanding from roughly 25 years of occasional practice in this area).