Cite as: 529 U. S. 494 (2000)
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 definitions, 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) (quoting 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 accomplished, 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 violation of § 1962(d), but rather the meaning of a civil cause of action for private 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) standing alone. The obvious source in the common law for the combined meaning of these provisions is the law of civil conspiracy.
501
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