The Three Meanings of 'United States'
The phrase “United States” can do different work in different legal contexts. The Supreme Court named the distinction explicitly in Hooven & Allison Co. v. Evatt, 324 U.S. 652 (1945) — a 1945 tariff case in which the Court had to decide whether goods imported from the Philippines into Ohio were “imports” within the Constitution’s Import-Export Clause. Resolving that question required clarifying which sense of “United States” the constitutional language used.
The Court’s articulation of the three senses, in its own words:
“The term ‘United States’ may be used in any one of several senses. It may be merely the name of a sovereign occupying the position analogous to that of other sovereigns in the family of nations. It may designate the territory over which the sovereignty of the United States extends, or it may be the collective name of the states which are united by and under the Constitution.”
The three senses, in plainer language:
- The sovereign nation — the United States as it appears in international relations, treaties, and diplomatic posture. The sovereign that signs the U.N. Charter is the United States in this sense.
- The territory under U.S. sovereignty — the geographic reach of U.S. authority, including all lands over which the federal government exercises sovereign control. In Hooven, this sense captured the Philippines (then a U.S. possession outside the constitutional union); historically it has captured all U.S. territories, possessions, and incorporated/unincorporated lands.
- The constitutional union of states — the fifty states “united by and under the Constitution.” This sense draws the line at the constitutional compact: states that have entered the Union, governed under the Constitution. Territories and possessions outside the Union are not within sense #3, even when they are within sense #2.
In Hooven itself, the question was whether sense #2 or sense #3 controlled the Import-Export Clause’s reference to “United States.” The Court held that goods from the Philippines could be “imports” because the Philippines, while within sense #2 (under U.S. sovereignty), was outside sense #3 (the constitutional union). That analysis was specific to the Import-Export Clause and to the particular question of whether trans-Pacific trade with a U.S. possession qualified as importation for tariff-clause purposes.
What the three senses do not do
The Hooven observation has been re-deployed in alternate-tax theory — most prominently in Paul Andrew Mitchell’s The Federal Zone — for a different argument: that the Internal Revenue Code’s references to “United States” use the “federal territory only” sense, and therefore the income tax does not reach the fifty states. That argument depends on three claims, each of which is unsupported by the actual case:
- Mitchell’s sense #2 is not Hooven’s sense #2. The Court’s sense #2 is “the territory over which the sovereignty of the United States extends” — which includes the Philippines (and analogous territories outside the Union), not “federal territory + D.C.” in contrast to the fifty states. The Court was distinguishing the federal sovereign generally from the constitutional union specifically; it was not distinguishing federal enclaves within the Union from the surrounding state territory.
- Hooven did not address IRC scope. The case is about a 1940s tariff/import question. Nothing in it speaks to the geographic scope of the federal income tax.
- The IRC has its own definition. 26 U.S.C. § 7701(a)(9) supplies the IRC’s own geographic definition of “United States”: “the term ‘United States’ when used in a geographical sense includes only the States and the District of Columbia.” That definition controls IRC interpretation; Hooven’s general observation about the term’s flexibility does not displace it.
The three senses are real. They do real work in tariff doctrine, treaty construction, and other contexts where the term’s potential ambiguity matters. They do not do the work alternate-tax theory asks them to do.
When the three senses do work
The distinction is genuinely useful in legal analysis where the context creates ambiguity about whether “United States” refers to the federal entity, the territorial reach of federal authority, or the constitutional union of states. Constitutional questions about federal-territorial relations (incorporation doctrine; the Insular Cases; questions about U.S. possessions like Puerto Rico, Guam, and historically the Philippines and Hawaii pre-statehood) genuinely turn on which sense controls. The three senses also help map debates about whether some federal action reaches outside the constitutional union, as in Hooven itself.
Within the IRC, the three senses are unnecessary because the Code supplies its own internal definition. The construction rule at 26 U.S.C. § 7701(c) confirms that “includes” in IRC definitions is non-exclusive — meaning the IRC’s geographic definition adds to ordinary meaning rather than replacing it.
The Federal Zone foundation essay treats this in detail.