Landgraf v. Usi Film Prods.

Landgraf v. Usi Film Prods., 511 U.S. 244, 272-73 (1994), is an 8-1 U.S. Supreme Court decision by Justice John Paul Stevens which states the general rule about applying decisions prospectively only:

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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 to pay for the countervailing benefits. Such a requirement allocates to Congress responsibility for fundamental policy judgments concerning the proper temporal reach of statutes, and has the additional virtue of giving legislators a predictable background rule against which to legislate.

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