Conflating the two wrecks precision.

The place "United States" is difficult to define for two reasons: the different meanings of United States may not be coextensive, and there are several plausible permutations of what the United States may encompass. First, the scope of the United States as an entity need not be coextensive with its scope as a place because an entity can own or exercise control over places that are not physically within itself. The Constitution seems to recognize this fact in at least two provisions. The Thirteenth Amendment refers to conduct "within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction,"87 and the Eighteenth Amendment (now repealed) referred to imports and exports "into" and "from" the "United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof."88 A place can thus be affiliated with the United States in a constitutionally meaningful way without being "in" it,89 and so the term "United States" may have distinct context-sensitive definitions depending on whether it refers to an entity or a place. 90 Moreover, asking whether a given place is a physical component of the United States rather than merely subject to its control (i.e., is it "in" the United States or "of' the United States) may often be pointless because there is no reason to think that the distinction matters beyond a few exceptional issues noted below. 91 Thus, for example, there might be no reason to develop legal fictions about whether the land under a particular federal installation is on U.S. soil, 92 or whether a ship flying a U.S. flag is an "island" of the United States. 93 What matters is how a particular place relates to the United States, which may not exclusively be a function of the place's location.

Second, because the Constitution defines many types of places, there are numerous permutations of these places that may collectively comprise the "United States." For example, the "United States" might merely be the sum of all land in the "States," or may also include land in the "Territories," the "District" constituting the seat of government, and/or federal "possessions." 94 The Constitution is silent about which permutation is accurate. The Supreme Court addressed the void by opining that the "term" "United States" "is the name given to our great republic, which is composed of States and territories."95 This statement appears correct insofar as it defines the United States as more than merely the sum of the states because the District of Columbia seems clearly in the United States even though it is not part of any state. 96 But the Court did not purport to treat all territories equally, nor did it purport to exclude other types of places from the ambit of the United States even if these arguably could not be classified as "territories" (such as embassies, military bases on foreign soil, U.S.-flagged ships, and the exclusive economic zone that extends 200 miles from the U.S. coast 9 7). 98 The Court's dicta thus adds little to our knowledge about what places are in the United States and what places are outside it.99