46 U.S.C. § 114 — United States

This section is a single, undivided definition with no lettered subsections. Wherever this title of the U.S. Code uses the words "United States" to describe a place — what the statute calls a "geographic sense" — the term means: the states of the United States, the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, and any other territory or possession of the United States. The section doesn't create any rights, duties, or penalties on its own. It only fixes what "United States" means whenever that phrase shows up elsewhere in this title.