358
Opinion of the Court
consequences to events completed before its enactment." Id., at 270. This judgment should be informed and guided by "familiar considerations of fair notice, reasonable reliance, and settled expectations." Ibid.
1
For postjudgment monitoring performed before the effective date of the PLRA, the PLRA's attorney's fees provisions, as construed by respondents, would have a retroactive effect contrary to the usual assumption that congressional statutes are prospective in operation. The attorneys in both Hadix and Glover had a reasonable expectation that work they performed prior to enactment of the PLRA in monitoring petitioners' compliance with the court orders would be compensated at the pre-PLRA rates as provided in the stipulated order. Long before the PLRA was enacted, the plaintiffs were declared prevailing parties, and the parties agreed to a system for periodically awarding attorney's fees for postjudgment monitoring. The District Court entered orders establishing that the fees were to be awarded at prevailing market rates, and specifically set those rates, as relevant here, at $150 per hour. Respondents' counsel performed a specific task—monitoring petitioners' compliance with the court orders—and they were told that they would be compensated at a rate of $150 per hour. Thus, when the lawyers provided these postjudgment monitoring services before the enactment of the PLRA, they worked in reasonable reliance on this fee schedule. The PLRA, as applied to work performed before its effective date, would alter the fee arrangement post hoc by reducing the rate of compensation. To give effect to the PLRA's fees limitations, after the fact, would "attac[h] new legal consequences" to completed conduct. Landgraf, supra, at 270.
Petitioners contest this conclusion. They contend that the application of a new attorney's fees provision is " 'un-questionably proper,' " Brief for Petitioners 24 (quoting
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