Retroactivity

“ In focusing solely on the pendency of a case before the court rather than on the reliance interests of either the defendant or the government, Griffith implicitly rejected the rationale of our prior retroactivity doctrine: that new decisions should not be applied retroactively so as to frustrate the expectations of parties who had justifiably relied on prior law. ”

“ A decision defining the operative conduct or events that will be adjudicated under old law does not, in itself, specify an appropriate remedy.
Especially in light of today's holding in McKesson, the dissent's view that the doctrine of civil retroactivity is a remedial principle would surprise the many commentators, [2] appellate courts, see Note, Confusion in Federal Courts: Application of the Chevron Test in Retroactive-Prospective Decisions, 1985 U.Ill.L.Rev. ”

“ Schumer, 520 U.S. 939, 951 (1997) , that a statute that "creates jurisdiction where none previously existed" is "as much subject to our presumption against retroactivity as any other." See also Republic of Austria v. Altmann, 541 U.S. 677, 695 (2004) (opinion for the Court by Stevens, J.) ; id., at 722 (Kennedy, J., dissenting) . The Court gives our retroactivity jurisprudence a dazzling clarity in asserting that "subsections (e) (2) and (e) (3) 'confer' jurisdiction in a manner that cannot conceivably give rise to retroactivity questions under our precedents." [2] Ante, at [p. 663] 582. ”

“ In conclusion, the Court in deciding these cases seems largely to have forgotten the limitations that accompany its functions as a court of law. For the retroactivity doctrine announced today bespeaks more considerations of policy than of legal principle. ”

“ As a court of law we have no right on direct review to treat one case differently from another with respect to constitutional provisions applicable to both. As regards cases coming here on collateral review, the problem of retroactivity is in truth none other than one of resettling the limits of the reach of the Great Writ, which under the recent decisions of this Court has been given almost boundless sweep. ”

“ Arguably it would not be giving retroactive effect to a new statutory interest rate for judgments if one applied that rate to all outstanding balances on judgments, with respect to all periods of time after the statute's effective date-regardless of when the judgments were rendered. It depends upon what one considers to be the determinative event by which retroactivity or prospectivity is to be calculated. If it is the entry of judgment, then only judgments rendered after the effective date will be covered by prospective application ”

“ It is significant that not a single one of the earlier cases cited in Thorpe and Bradley-except, of course, the cases dealing with judicial decisions rather than statutes and the case dealing with repeal of a criminal statute-even purports to be applying a presumption of retroactivity. They purport to be following the express command of the statute, or not to be acting retroactively at all. ”

“ Mr. Justice BLACK concurs in the Court's holding as to retroactivity for the reasons given in his dissent in Linkletter v. Walker, 381 U.S. 618, 640, 85 S.Ct. 1731, 1743, and not for the reasons given in the Court's opinion today. ”

“ Justice HARLAN in his separate opinion covering the present cases, 401 U.S. 675, 91 S.Ct. 1171, 28 L.Ed.2d 410, in my view requires that cases still on direct review should receive full benefit of our supervening constitutional decisions. I am persuaded that willingness to tolerate the inevitable costs and anomalies of the Court's current approach to retroactivity is incompatible with the judicial duty of principaled review of convictions not yet final. ”

“ Significant hardships would be imposed on cities, bondholders, and others connected with municipal utilities if our decision today were given full retroactive effect. Where a decision of this Court could produce substantial inequitable results if applied retroactively, there is ample basis in our cases for avoiding the 'injustice or hardship' by a holding of nonretroactivity. ”

“ The court below rejected the claim, holding that Escobedo did not affect convictions which had become final prior to the date of that decision, [6] and it is this holding which we are principally called upon to review. In view of the standards announced one week ago concerning the warnings which must be given prior to in-custody interrogation, this case also obliges us to determine whether Miranda should be accorded retroactive application.
In the past year we have twice dealt with the problem of retroactivity in connection with other constitutional rules of criminal procedure. Linkletter v. ”

“ Security Industrial Bank, 459 U.S., at 79, 103 S.Ct., at 413-and (in seeming inconsistency with the analysis of Thorpe and Bradley ) have even quoted from Schooner Peggy to support that principle, 459 U.S., at 79-80, 103 S.Ct., at 413. Our most recent affirmation of the presumption of nonretroactivity (where the statute antedated initial adjudication) occurred last Term in Bowen v. Georgetown University Hospital, 488 U.S., at 208, 109 S.Ct., at 471, where the following strong statement of the traditional rule was necessary to our unanimous decision:
"Retroactivity is not favored in the law. ”

“ The retroactive aspects of legislation, as well as the prospective aspects, must meet the test of due process, and the justifications for the latter may not suffice for the former.' But that burden is met simply by showing that the retroactive application of the legislation is itself justified by a rational legislative purpose. ”

“ Yet succession is an undeniable fact, even in the material world. Though our reasoning on isolated systems may imply that their history, past, present, and future, might be instantaneously unfurled like a fan, this history, in point of fact, unfolds itself gradually, as if it occupied a duration like our own. ”

“ Not for Crasweller, or Barnes, or Tallowax, will this thing be good,—nor for those old women who are already lying about their ages in their cottages,—nor for myself, who am, I know, too apt to boast of myself, that even though old age should come upon me, I may be able to avoid the worst of its effects; but for those untold generations to come, whose lives may be modelled for them under the knowledge that at a certain Fixed Period they shall depart hence with all circumstances of honour and glory. ”

“ Yet petitioner asks us to hold that for the purposes of the statute of limitations we use the presumption of § 810, that death occurs at the expiration of a continued seven-year period of absence, in order to postpone the accrual of a cause of action necessarily founded on a death allegedly occurring at the beginning of the seven years. ”

“ Our ancestors, instead of fixing a given number of years as the period within which legal proceedings to recover real property must be resorted to, had recourse to the singular expedient of making the period of limitation run from particular events or dates. ”

“ Where it is claimed that a law is to have a retrospective operation, such must be clearly the intention, evidenced in the law and its purposes, or the court will presume that the lawmaking power is acting for the future only, and not for the past ”

“ The analogy of a person who has been sentenced to imprisonment for a certain period, and who, on the expiration of that period, is at once released, has been referred to, as apposite to the case of a definite suspension. Still more appropriately may we refer to the case of a person transported for a term of years, and who cannot return until that term expires, but who is at liberty at once to do so when it has expired. ”

“ In this generation probably, the Fixed Period must be allowed to be in abeyance." When I had uttered these words there came much cheering and a loud sound of triumph, which was indorsed probably by the postponement of the system, which had its terrors; but I was enabled to accept these friendly noises as having been awarded to the system itself. "Well, as you all love the Fixed Period, it must be delayed till Sir Ferdinando and the English have—been converted." ”

“ Arise, therefore, for as there is time to avoid a death so frightful, hasten to make amends for the past, and wait not until there will be no fit time for reparation. Wait not for another month, another week. ”

“ The conclusion of an administrative year is naturally a time for retrospection rather than for announcement and planning, and seldom may we derive more satisfaction from such a backward glance than at the present period. ”

“ This kind of inadequacy is revealed by a post-mortem determination of causes of which there were no symptoms leading to a correct diagnosis during life. The loss to be incurred through the scrapping of the property before its expected termination of service is a loss which must be borne by the future and not by the past. ”

“ Justice Strong, the rule was recognized and affirmed that 'when there is no order of succession in time, when there are two concurrent causes of a loss, the predominating efficient one must be regarded as the proximate, when the damage done by each cannot be distinguished.' And it was added, 'And certainly that cause which set the other in motion, and gave to it its efficiency for harm at the time of the disaster, must rank as predominant.' Id. ”

“ These various provisions are all contained in the same section of the statute, and there is not much of it left to be made retrospective, as matter of procedure, after these other provisions have been held to be prospective only. If the limitation as to the district in which the suit upon the bond could be brought were to be regarded as simply matter of procedure (which we do not assert) , we still think it is not to be construed as applying retrospectively. ”

“ Some system may be the best for a time but must in turn give place to new formations. In this process the old is ever mixed with the new. The past hangs on to plague the present, and the vision of the future disturbs the quiet and stability that the present inherited from the past. ”

“ If, after an interval, when reflection has had ample time to operate, the offence seems great as at first, or the insult appears unmitigated by any circumstances on which memory can dwell,—if it is then brought forward, the immediate answer is, The affair is out of date—the thing is gone by—it is too late to call in question a transaction so long past. ”

“ But, if the period of its continuance should thus be extended from three to seven years, the natural course of encroachment, or some momentous circumstances like the present, might lead to fresh prolongations, and gradually to an entire repeal of what had been thought so important a safeguard of its purity. Time has happily put an end to apprehensions which are not on that account to be reckoned unreasonable. ”

“ Here besides the law of retrospection, which regards all the past as a preparation for events that subsequently occur, the law of reciprocity comes in, confusing the whole matter. A good chessplayer having lost a game is sincerely convinced that his loss resulted from a mistake he made and looks for that mistake in the opening, but forgets that at each stage of the game there were similar mistakes and that none of his moves were perfect. ”

“ And next—that all the history of a place has not equally little to do with its present state; for past events are often, casually or otherwise, related to the present, and so become a fair subject of retrospect, unless restraints are to be imposed on this branch of knowledge which are unknown to any other. ”

“ It is beyond prediction what the consequences may be, of uncertainty, or hardship, of injustice in deprivation of rights, in windfalls of right to others, in laying on new and wholly unexpected liabilities and in relieving from anticipated ones, if retroactive administrative refashioning becomes the general practice. ”

“ The time for revision being now at hand, you are requested to give your suggestions as to the means of avoiding a rupture with foreigners, and in case of a rupture, what will ensure safety. The principal points likely to be brought forward at the revision conferences are here submitted for your consideration. To simply declare the whole impracticable is easy; the difficulty will be to devise a plan for safely avoiding concession. Deal with the matter, therefore, in a practical way, and not by an empty thesis; and let your memorial reach us not later than December. ”

“ Then, as the succession to come will end by being a succession past, we persuade ourselves that the duration to come admits of the same treatment as past duration, that it is, even now, unrollable, that the future is there, rolled up, already painted on the canvas. An illusion, no doubt, but an illusion that is natural, ineradicable, and that will last as long as the human mind! ”

“ CHAPTER XXII ONE afternoon, toward dusk the fifth day of her captivity—Retrospection seized her and whirled her away in his purple chariot.
Retrospection, who is one of the unmentioned gods of tragedy, is never very particular about his backgrounds ”

“ He looks back upon the past and the retrospect is a worse than wasted life; and when the future looms up before him he shrinks back from the contemplation, for the sins of the past throw their shadow over the future. ”

“ The motion which I have the honor to lay before your lordships has a double aspect—it passes judgment on the past, and expresses an opinion with regard to the policy of the future. Some people receive with considerable impatience the idea that, at the present crisis of our country’s destiny, we should examine into the past, and spend our time in judging of that which can not be recalled. ”

“ I asked them in committee whether they were prepared to prove that the 969 years, as spoken of in Genesis, were the same measure of time as 969 years now, and told them that if the sanitary arrangements of the world would again permit men to live as long as the patriarchs, we would gladly change the Fixed Period. ”

“ The contingencies here were too numerous and too important in their effects not only upon the time but also upon the right of immediate enjoyment for them to be regarded as trivial or inconsequential, as respondent urges. Decedent's failure to reserve for himself any beneficial interest or power to recapture one is not controlling. ”