Possible to recover journals in ext3 filesystems?

[Eric Lemings]

I mounted a root filesystem from an older installation and found that
the files were not current.  I figure it has something to do with the
journaling in the ext3 filesystem.  I know I shutdown the system the
last time that root filesystem was cleanly unmounted so all files should
be current when mounted on a different system, shouldn't they?  Or is
there some particular way it has to be mounted?  Are the latest versions
of the files recoverable?
 
Thanks,
Eric.