272
Opinion of the Court
spective operation, whereby rights previously vested are injuriously affected, unless compelled to do so by language so clear and positive as to leave no room to doubt that such was the intention of the legislature." Id., at 559.
Our statement in Bowen that "congressional enactments and administrative rules will not be construed to have retroactive effect unless their language requires this result," 488 U. S., at 208, was in step with this long line of cases.26
Bowen itself was a paradigmatic case of retroactivity in which a federal agency sought to recoup, under cost limit regulations issued in 1984, funds that had been paid to hospitals for services rendered earlier, see id., at 207; our search for clear congressional intent authorizing retroactivity was consistent with the approach taken in decisions spanning two centuries.
The presumption against statutory retroactivity had special force in the era in which courts tended to view legislative interference with property and contract rights circumspectly. In this century, legislation has come to supply the dominant means of legal ordering, and circumspection has given way to greater deference to legislative judgments. See Usery v. Turner Elkhorn Mining Co., 428 U. S., at 15-16; Home Building & Loan Assn. v. Blaisdell, 290 U. S. 398, 436-444 (1934). But while the constitutional impediments to retroactive civil legislation are now modest, prospectivity remains the appropriate default rule. Because it accords with widely held intuitions about how statutes ordinarily operate, a presumption against retroactivity will generally coincide with legislative and public expectations. Requiring clear intent assures that Congress itself has affirmatively considered the potential unfairness of retroactive application and determined that it is an acceptable price
26 See also, e. g., Greene v. United States, 376 U. S. 149, 160 (1964); White v. United States, 191 U. S. 545 (1903); United States v. Moore, 95 U. S. 760, 762 (1878); Murray v. Gibson, 15 How. 421, 423 (1854); Ladiga v. Roland, 2 How. 581, 589 (1844).
Page: Index Previous 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007