Definition
Receiving, in law, carries two related but distinct senses depending on context.
1. RECEIVING (CRIMINAL LAW): The act of taking possession of property known to be stolen, with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it. Commonly prosecuted as "receiving stolen goods" or "receiving stolen property," this offense targets those who provide a market for theft by knowingly acquiring its proceeds. The receiver need not be the original thief; the crime is complete upon acceptance of the property with guilty knowledge.
2. RECEIVING (EQUITY / RECEIVERSHIP): The administrative act of a court-appointed receiver taking custody and control of property or funds under judicial authority. In this context, "receiving" describes the receiver's ongoing function — gathering assets, collecting income, and holding property for distribution or preservation under the court's direction. Bouvier's defines it broadly as "taking or having."
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Present participle and gerund of "receive" — the act of getting or accepting something delivered or offered.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): Not separately provided, but "receive" in ordinary 19th-century usage meant to take into one's possession or to accept something given or sent.
The gap between common and legal usage is significant in the criminal context. In everyday speech, receiving is neutral — one receives a gift, a letter, a paycheck. In criminal law, "receiving" is a term of art encoding guilty knowledge and criminal purpose. The ordinary sense implies passivity or legitimacy; the legal offense requires neither the appearance of innocence nor active theft, but specifically the knowing acceptance of tainted property. A researcher who reads "receiving" in a historical indictment without recognizing this term of art will miss the nature of the charge entirely.
Common Confusion
RECEIVING vs. THEFT/LARCENY: Receiving stolen property is a separate offense from the underlying theft. The receiver cannot usually be convicted of both the theft and receiving the same property, as the crimes require different actors in the chain of possession. Historical sources sometimes blur this distinction, treating "receiver" as an accessory to theft rather than a principal in a distinct offense.
RECEIVING (CRIMINAL) vs. RECEIVING (RECEIVERSHIP): The word appears in two entirely unrelated legal contexts — criminal law and equity/corporate procedure. A "receiving certificate" or "receiver's certificate" has nothing to do with stolen goods; it is a debt instrument issued in receivership proceedings. Context is the only guide, and historical legal documents do not always make the distinction obvious.
Core Elements
For the criminal offense of receiving stolen property, courts have generally required:
1. Property that was, in fact, stolen
2. Receipt — actual or constructive possession taken by the defendant
3. Knowledge — the defendant knew or believed the property to be stolen at the time of receipt
4. Intent — to deprive the owner, or to assist in the concealment or disposition of stolen goods
The knowledge element is historically and doctrinally the most contested. "Willful blindness" or deliberate ignorance has been treated in many jurisdictions as equivalent to actual knowledge, but the precise formulation varies and has evolved considerably over time.
Why It Matters in Research
The dual meaning of "receiving" creates real navigational hazards. A search across historical legal sources will return results from both criminal law and equity without any surface signal distinguishing them. Indictments, court opinions, and treatise passages using "receiving" may be about fencing stolen goods or about a court-supervised asset collection — and the surrounding vocabulary is not always disambiguating.
In criminal law sources, researchers should note that the offense of receiving stolen property underwent significant doctrinal development in the 18th and 19th centuries. Early common law treated receivers primarily as accessories; statutory reform gradually elevated receiving to a standalone principal offense. This shift means that pre-19th-century sources may characterize the legal relationship between thief and receiver differently than modern doctrine does.
The knowledge element is a particular research trap. Historical sources, including Bouvier's, may describe the scienter requirement in terms that sound more absolute ("knowing" the goods to be stolen) than modern courts have required. Jurisdictions diverged on whether suspicion, recklessness, or willful blindness sufficed, and statutory reforms in the 20th century further revised the standard in many places.
In the receivership context, Bouvier's treatment of receivers' certificates illustrates a narrow but important historical issue: the status and negotiability of instruments issued by court-appointed receivers. The corpus contains significant 19th-century equity litigation on this point, and researchers working on receivership finance should treat these certificates as a distinct category from commercial paper.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier's Law Dictionary defines receiving in its broadest sense simply as "taking or having" — a notably spare entry that signals the term's function as a gerund covering the receiver's general custodial role in equity. Bouvier's more developed treatment appears under RECEIVER and RECEIVERS' CERTIFICATES, where the limitations on a chancellor's authority to authorize certificate issuance are discussed with citation to Alabama and federal circuit court authority. The point that receivers' certificates lack negotiability and "almost every characteristic of negotiable paper" was a contested proposition in 19th-century practice, as the "but see" signal in Bouvier's own text suggests.
For the criminal offense, historical dictionaries generally handled receiving under the compound entry "receiving stolen goods" or "receiving stolen property" rather than under "receiving" alone. Researchers using Bouvier's or contemporaneous dictionaries should search the compound term, not the gerund.
Jurisdictional Note
The elements of criminal receiving vary across jurisdictions, particularly on the scienter requirement and whether possession must be actual or may be constructive. Some jurisdictions have absorbed receiving into broader theft consolidation statutes; others retain it as a standalone offense. Researchers working across state lines or across historical periods should verify which formulation applied in the relevant jurisdiction and era.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Receiving Stolen Property — The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia