The word "retroactive" is correct and usable in written English.
It is an adjective and usually means "taking effect backwards, affecting past events." For example: "The retroactive decision meant that all students who had taken the exam would get a full refund."
But while the Palestinians have stuck to their agreement to postpone pressing their case for statehood at international bodies, Israel has infringed its unannounced de facto moratorium on settlement expansion with recent moves on the retroactive legalisation of four unauthorised outposts and the construction of 300 houses at Beit El.
There is a bill in Congress that will provide for retroactive back pay when we return to work, but the question becomes when do we return to work?
Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader, will try to pass a retroactive extension, without offsets, soon after the Senate reconvenes on January 6th, a move Mr Obama says he supports.
Municipal employees have been working without contracts, some for four years or more, and are demanding retroactive pay rises.
See articleQuestions, questionsMitt Romney came under sustained assault from the Obama campaign for refusing to release more than two years of tax returns and also about the timing of his departure from Bain Capital (described as a "retroactive retirement" by one of Mr Romney's advisers).
THE House of Representatives is in session to consider what has inaptly been described as "compromise legislation" to expand executive branch spying powers and grant retroactive legal immunity to telecoms that participated in the NSA's warrantless wiretap programme.
He referred to historic claims dating back to the Han dynasty (contemporary with the Roman empire, from 206BC to 220AD) and suggested that the law of the sea could not have a retroactive effect on them.
The problem is that many Southerners' retroactive embrace of the civil-rights movement depends precisely on pretending that the Civil War had nothing to do with racism.
He proposes that this change apply only to marriages enacted after a new law takes effect, presumably because a retroactive change could lead to a queue of pretenders outside Buckingham Palace.
Municipal employees, many without contracts for four or more years, are demanding potentially crippling retroactive pay rises.On the same night Eliot Spitzer, who resigned as governor of New York state in 2008 after a prostitution scandal, lost his bid to return to public office as the city's comptroller.
Congress rejected retroactive extradition decisively, and the Cali kingpins, though now behind bars, are unlikely ever to face American justice.
