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temporal reach. Landgraf v. USI Film Products, 511 U. S. 244, 280. If not, the Court determines whether the statute's application to the conduct at issue would result in a retroactive effect. If so, the Court presumes that the statute does not apply to that conduct. E. g., ibid. P. 352. (b) Congress has not expressly mandated § 803(d)(3)'s temporal reach. The fundamental problem with petitioners' arguments that the language of § 803(d)(1)—which provides for attorney's fees "[i]n any action brought by a prisoner who is confined" (emphasis added)—and of § 803(d)(3)—which relates to fee "award[s]"—clearly expresses a congressional intent that § 803(d) apply to pending cases is that § 803(d) is better read as setting substantive limits on the award of attorney's fees, and as making no attempt to define the temporal reach of these substantive limitations. Had Congress intended § 803(d)(3) to apply to all fee orders entered after the effective date, it could have used language that unambiguously addresses the section's temporal reach, such as the language suggested in Landgraf: "[T]he [PLRA] shall apply to all proceedings pending on or commenced after the date of enactment." 511 U. S., at 260 (internal quotation marks omitted). Pp. 353-355.
(c) The Court also rejects respondents' contention that the PLRA's fee provisions reveal a congressional intent that they apply prospectively only to cases filed after the effective date. According to respondents, a comparison of § 802—which, in addressing "appropriate remedies" in prison litigation, explicitly provides that it applies to pending cases, § 802(b)(1)—with § 803—which is silent on the subject— supports the negative inference that § 803 does not apply to pending cases. This argument is based on an analogy to Lindh v. Murphy, 521 U. S. 320, 329, in which the Court, in concluding that chapter 153 of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 was inapplicable to pending cases, relied heavily on the observation that chapter 154 of that Act included explicit language making it applicable to such cases. The "negative inference" argument is inapposite here. In Lindh, the negative inference arose from the fact that the two chapters addressed similar issues, see ibid.; here, §§ 802 and 803 address wholly distinct subject matters. Finally, respondents' attempt to bolster their "negative inference" argument with the legislative history— which indicates that § 803's attorney's fees limitations were originally part of § 802, along with language making them applicable to pending cases—overstates the inferences that can be drawn from an ambiguous act of legislative drafting. Pp. 355-357.
(d) Application of § 803(d)(3) in parts of this case would have retroactive effects inconsistent with the usual rule that legislation is deemed to be prospective. Pp. 357-362.
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