Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 576

529US2

Unit: $U51

[09-26-01 10:31:04] PAGES PGT: OPIN

Cite as: 529 U. S. 494 (2000)

501

Opinion of the Court

“presumably knows and adopts the cluster of ideas that
were attached to each borrowed word in the body of
learning from which it was taken and the meaning its
use will convey to the judicial mind unless otherwise
instructed.
In such case, absence of contrary direction
may be taken as satisfaction with widely accepted deﬁ-
nitions, not as a departure from them.” Morissette v.
United States, 342 U. S. 246, 263 (1952).

See Molzof v. United States, 502 U. S. 301, 307 (1992) (quot-
ing Morissette, supra, at 263); NLRB v. Amax Coal Co., 453
U. S. 322, 329 (1981).6

By the time of RICO’s enactment in 1970, it was widely
accepted that a plaintiff could bring suit for civil conspiracy
only if he had been injured by an act that was itself tortious.
See, e. g., 4 Restatement (Second) of Torts § 876, Comment b
(1977) (“The mere common plan, design or even express
agreement is not enough for liability in itself, and there must
be acts of a tortious character in carrying it into execution”);
W. Prosser, Law of Torts § 46, p. 293 (4th ed. 1971) (“It is
only where means are employed, or purposes are accom-
plished, which are themselves tortious, that the conspirators
who have not acted but have promoted the act will be held
liable” (footnotes omitted)); Satin v. Satin, 69 App. Div. 2d
761, 762, 414 N. Y. S. 2d 570 (1979) (Memorandum Decision)
(“There is no tort of civil conspiracy in and of itself. There
must ﬁrst be pleaded speciﬁc wrongful acts which might con-

6 Petitioner suggests that we should look to criminal, rather than civil,
common-law principles to interpret the statute. We have turned to the
common law of criminal conspiracy to deﬁne what constitutes a violation
of § 1962(d), see Salinas v. United States, 522 U. S. 52, 63–65 (1997), a
mere violation being all that is necessary for criminal liability. This case,
however, does not present simply the question of what constitutes a viola-
tion of § 1962(d), but rather the meaning of a civil cause of action for pri-
vate injury by reason of such a violation.
In other words, our task is to
interpret §§ 1964(c) and 1962(d) in conjunction, rather than § 1962(d) stand-
ing alone. The obvious source in the common law for the combined mean-
ing of these provisions is the law of civil conspiracy.