Legally, the United States is a singular person
Herz 91 [Michael Herz, Assistant Professor, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University. B.A., Swarthmore College, 1979; J.D., University of Chicago Law School, 1982, April 1991, William & Mary Law Review, “United States v United States: When Can the Federal Government Sue Itself?”, //zrubin]
Consider, then, merely the United States government as one person. The idea of a unitary federal government, its parts joined by "one indissoluble bond of unity and amity,"'r5 is an attractive one. The Supreme Court's opinion in United States v. Providence Journal Co. 52 recently illustrated just how attractive it is. In that case, the Court refused to allow the Solicitor General to relinquish his role as lawyer for the United States even though the governmental interest concerned the judicial rather than the executive branch. Operating from a conception of a unified government, the Court rejected as "startling" the suggestion that "there is more than one 'United States' that may appear before this Court."' ' As a matter of statutory interpretation, the holding in Providence Journal is unobjectionable.