Definition
In legal usage, "America" functions as a geographic and political signifier with technical meanings that differ from its casual use. Two primary legal senses appear in American legal materials:
1. The United States of America. The term is used in legal instruments, treaties, statutes, and judicial opinions as shorthand for the federal sovereign. In this sense, "America" refers to the nation-state, not to the continent or hemisphere. Formal usage in legal titles — such as "United States of America v. [defendant]" — distinguishes the federal party from state or private parties.
2. The geographic hemisphere or continental landmass. In treaty law and international legal documents, "America" or "the Americas" may refer to the broader Western Hemisphere, encompassing North, Central, and South America. Context governs which meaning applies.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A supercontinent consisting of North America, Central America, and South America regarded as a whole (the Americas); also, informally, the United States of America; also a female given name and a Dutch place name.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "One of the grand divisions of the earth, consisting of the continent of North and South America, and their adjacent islands."
The gap between common and legal usage matters at the margins. In international treaties, "America" may encompass the full hemisphere, whereas in domestic statutes and constitutional interpretation, it invariably means the United States. A researcher reading a nineteenth-century treaty should not assume the narrower domestic meaning; the geographic scope of "America" in that document must be determined by context and the parties' intent.
Common Confusion
The term "America" is frequently treated as legally interchangeable with "United States," but courts have occasionally drawn distinctions. Most critically, "America" as a geographic concept does not resolve the harder question of which territories, districts, or possessions fall within "the United States" for constitutional or statutory purposes. The District of Columbia, for example, has been held not to be a "State" within the Judiciary Act for purposes of diversity jurisdiction, even though it is unambiguously within America in every sense of the word. Researchers should resist using geographic "America" as a proxy for "United States" in constitutional analysis.
Why It Matters in Research
The term is less a term of art than a term of ambiguity that shows up at critical junctures in primary sources. Three research traps warrant attention:
First, treaty interpretation. Pre-twentieth-century treaties, particularly those with European powers, use "America" in the continental or hemispheric sense. The Bouvier entry references the treaty of 1853, where "State of the Union" and related geographic language raised questions about scope. A researcher who imports the modern domestic shorthand meaning of "America" into such treaty language will misread the document.
Second, diversity jurisdiction and territorial status. The Bouvier entry encodes the recurring nineteenth-century problem: the District of Columbia and territorial districts were held not to be "states" under the Judiciary Act or the Constitution's diversity jurisdiction clause, even though they were indisputably American soil. This distinction — between being part of America and being a "state" within the legal meaning of federal jurisdictional statutes — generated significant litigation. Researchers working in federal court jurisdiction history must track this fault line carefully.
Third, the evolution of "American" as a legal descriptor. Anderson notes that "American" in the general legal and popular mind had come to denote specifically a United States citizen or inhabitant, narrowing from its earlier hemispheric sense. This shift matters when reading nineteenth-century legal materials that use "American citizen" or "American commerce" — the intended scope may be broader or narrower depending on the decade and context.
Historical Dictionary Support
Bouvier and Anderson approach the term from different angles, and together they reveal the central tension in its legal usage.
Bouvier focuses on the jurisdictional consequences of the geographic term: the fact that certain American territories — specifically the District of Columbia — do not satisfy the constitutional and statutory definition of "State," even for purposes of federal diversity jurisdiction. Bouvier's entry is essentially a warning label: being geographically in America does not confer the legal status of statehood for jurisdictional purposes.
Anderson takes a more sociological approach, noting that "American" had by his time acquired a specific ethnic and national valence — denoting descendants of Europeans born in America, with particular application to United States inhabitants. This is historically significant for researchers reading nineteenth-century naturalization law, citizenship statutes, and treaty provisions that use "American" as a descriptor.
Neither dictionary addresses the full complexity of "America" in international law, and neither anticipates twentieth-century complications such as the legal status of insular territories after the Insular Cases. Researchers working in those areas will need to move beyond both sources.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
See: United States (Constitutional Structure); Territories and Territorial Jurisdiction; Diversity Jurisdiction