Under the Federal Arbitration Act's Section 10, US courts may vacate a domestic award only on narrow grounds: corruption or fraud, evident partiality of an arbitrator, arbitrator misconduct that prejudiced a party's rights, or the arbitrators exceeding their powers. This is distinct from the Article V grounds a foreign court applies when deciding whether to enforce an award under the New York Convention — an enforcement court does not relitigate the merits and applies its own, differently-framed set of narrow defenses.

The key structural distinction is where each remedy operates: vacatur happens only in the courts at the seat of arbitration, and a successful vacatur can strip the award of legal effect essentially everywhere. A refusal to enforce under Article V, by contrast, only affects enforcement in that one enforcing country and leaves the award otherwise intact and enforceable elsewhere.

Juricratic models vacatur risk and enforcement-refusal risk as two separate, sequential dials in the post-award branch of a matter, rather than collapsing them into a single 'will this award hold up' number — the two questions are asked by different courts, under different standards, with very different consequences.

A losing party who believes the tribunal exceeded its authority or was tainted by bias petitions the seat's courts to vacate the award, while the winning party separately maps out an enforcement strategy in every jurisdiction where the losing party holds attachable assets.