Definition
To solicit is to request, urge, or attempt to induce another person to do something. In law, the term carries distinct meanings depending on context:
1. Criminal solicitation. To solicit, in criminal law, means to command, encourage, request, or induce another person to commit a crime. The offense is complete at the moment of the communication — no agreement, attempt, or completion of the underlying crime is required. Criminal solicitation is an inchoate offense, meaning it exists independently of whether the target crime ever occurs.
2. Solicitation of prostitution. To solicit in this context means to request or offer to engage in, or to procure another person for, sexual conduct in exchange for compensation. Both the person offering and the person requesting may be charged depending on jurisdiction.
3. Commercial and charitable solicitation. To solicit in a business or nonprofit context means to approach another party with a request for business, a sale, a contribution, or a subscription. Charitable solicitation is heavily regulated under state law and, in some contexts, raises First Amendment considerations.
4. Professional solicitation. In the context of attorney conduct, to solicit means to initiate contact with a prospective client for the purpose of obtaining legal representation, particularly in-person or by targeted direct communication. Professional rules restrict certain forms of attorney solicitation.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): Solicitation — the act of asking for or trying to obtain something from someone.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): To ask from with earnestness; to make petition to; to apply to for obtaining something; to endeavor to obtain; to seek; to plead for; to awake or excite to action; to rouse desire.
The common meaning of solicit — simply to ask or appeal earnestly — captures only the surface of its legal significance. In law, the act of soliciting can itself constitute a completed crime regardless of the response it receives, a concept entirely absent from ordinary usage. A researcher reading "solicit" in a historical indictment or statute must treat it as a legal term of art, not a neutral synonym for "request."
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Common Confusion
SOLICIT vs. ATTEMPT vs. CONSPIRACY. These three inchoate offenses are closely related but distinct. Solicitation requires only that the request or inducement be communicated; the solicitor need not take any further step. Attempt requires an overt act beyond mere preparation toward committing the crime. Conspiracy requires an agreement between two or more parties and, in most jurisdictions, an overt act. A single transaction can give rise to charges of all three if the facts support it, but they are not interchangeable. Anderson's correctly flags the comparison to ATTEMPT; researchers should note that the merger doctrine — under which solicitation may merge into the completed offense — varies by jurisdiction and affects how charges are framed in historical indictments.
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Core Elements
For criminal solicitation specifically, the elements are:
1. A communication (oral, written, or by conduct) directed at another person.
2. With intent that the other person commit a specific crime.
3. The communication requests, commands, encourages, or induces commission of that crime.
No agreement, acceptance, or action by the recipient is required. The crime is complete upon the solicitor's communication with the requisite intent.
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Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Criminal solicitation — inducing another to commit any crime; at common law typically a misdemeanor; modernized in most jurisdictions by statute with grading tied to the severity of the underlying offense.
Solicitation of prostitution — a distinct statutory offense in most jurisdictions, often prosecuted separately from general criminal solicitation doctrine.
Charitable solicitation — regulated under state charitable solicitation acts governing registration, disclosure, and conduct of fundraising by nonprofits and professional fundraisers.
Attorney solicitation — governed by professional conduct rules (Model Rules of Professional Conduct, Rule 7.3 in the modern framework) restricting in-person and targeted written solicitation of prospective clients.
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Why It Matters in Research
Researchers working in historical criminal law sources will encounter solicit used both loosely (as a synonym for attempt or incitement) and technically (as the distinct inchoate offense). Anderson's entry illustrates both: it defines the word broadly as "to importune, entreat, implore, ask" but then immediately grounds it in criminal doctrine. The boundary between solicitation, attempt, and conspiracy was not always cleanly drawn in pre-Model Penal Code sources, and historical indictments may use the terms interchangeably. The Model Penal Code (§ 5.02) significantly rationalized solicitation doctrine in the second half of the twentieth century; sources predating its adoption may reflect a common-law landscape where solicitation was uniformly a misdemeanor regardless of the severity of the crime solicited.
For researchers in the business and nonprofit contexts, the term's regulatory meaning is distinct from its criminal meaning and governed by an entirely different body of law — state charitable solicitation statutes, securities regulations, and professional conduct rules. A search for "solicitation" across a mixed corpus will return results from all of these contexts simultaneously, requiring careful disambiguation.
The prostitution-specific meaning of solicit intersects with both criminal law and social history sources. Researchers should note that anti-solicitation statutes in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were sometimes applied asymmetrically by gender, and the term's usage in historical case law and police records may carry social context not visible in the bare legal definition.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Anderson's Dictionary of Law treats solicit primarily through its criminal law dimension, offering a functional definition — "to importune, entreat, implore, ask, attempt, try to obtain" — and then immediately tethering it to an indictment context involving solicitation to commit murder. The entry's most useful signal is its instruction to "compare ATTEMPT," acknowledging that the two concepts travel together but are not identical. Anderson's also notes that solicitation to commit a crime was a misdemeanor at common law, which is accurate for the historical period the dictionary reflects. The cross-reference to CHASTITY is a reminder that solicitation in Anderson's era had a distinct moral-regulatory dimension connected to statutes governing sexual conduct, a context now largely absorbed into specific prostitution and sex offense statutes.
What Anderson's does not address — and what researchers should supply from other sources — is the modern statutory grading of solicitation offenses, the Model Penal Code's treatment, or the regulatory solicitation contexts (charitable, commercial, professional). The definition remains useful as a baseline for reading criminal law materials from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries but should not be relied upon as a complete account of the term's current legal scope.
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Jurisdictional Note
Criminal solicitation is codified by statute in most U.S. jurisdictions, with significant variation in grading (some states tie the offense level to the underlying crime; others maintain a flat misdemeanor classification for all solicitations). Charitable solicitation is governed almost entirely by state law, with no uniform federal framework. Attorney solicitation rules track the Model Rules of Professional Conduct in most states but with meaningful local variation in what targeted communications are permitted.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia: Inchoate Crimes — Solicitation (criminal_18)
The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia: Prostitution and Solicitation (criminal_113)
The Law Mind Business Organizations & Corporate Law Encyclopedia: Nonprofits — Charitable Solicitation Laws and Fundraising Regulation (business_149)
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