This Article proceeds as follows. Part II briefly sketches the settings in which courts may be asked to conduct the early policing with which this Article is concerned. Part III identifies the terminological confusion that has hampered clear thinking on the subject, and proposes a coherent vocabulary for overcoming it. Part IV then explores critically the conceptual devices that courts and commentators have traditionally employed in sorting through the issues. In so doing, it demonstrates that the two notions most widely relied upon for this purpose—Kompetenz-Kompetenz and separability—are unequal to the task, and explains why. A critical understanding of U.S. law in this regard is aided by comparing it to models—the French and German—that claim to have devised simple and workable formulae for reconciling efficacy and legitimacy interests at the outset of the arbitral process. That discussion will show how the often proclaimed universality of Kompetenz-Kompetenz and separability is in fact misleading.