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The United States of America is a federal republic [1] consisting of 50 states, a federal district (Washington, D.C., the capital city of the United States), five major territories, and various minor islands. [2] [3] Both the states and the United States as a whole are each sovereign jurisdictions. [4]
The following table is a list of all 50 states and their respective dates of statehood. The first 13 became states in July 1776 upon agreeing to the United States Declaration of Independence, and each joined the first Union of states between 1777 and 1781, upon ratifying the Articles of Confederation, its first constitution. [6]
States are divided into counties or county-equivalents, which may be assigned some local governmental authority but are not sovereign. County or county-equivalent structure varies widely by state, and states also create other local governments. States, unlike U.S. territories, possess many powers and rights under the United States Constitution.
The French then later spread unitary states by conquests, throughout Europe during and after the Napoleonic Wars, and to the world through the vast French colonial empire. [1] Presently, prefects remain an illustration of the French unitary state system, as the representatives of the State in each department , tasked with upholding central ...
The United States comprises 50 states: 9 of the Thirteen Colonies that were already part of the United States at the time the Constitution took effect in 1789, 4 that ratified the Constitution after its commencement, plus 37 that have been admitted since by Congress as authorized under Article IV, Section 3 of the Constitution. [2]
Besides the four aforementioned states, other states have also on occasion used the term "commonwealth" to refer to themselves: The term "commonwealth" is used interchangeably with the term " state " in the Constitution of Vermont , [ 11 ] but the act of Congress admitting that state to the Union calls it "the State of Vermont."
The term "United States," when used in the geographic sense, refers to the contiguous United States (sometimes referred to as the Lower 48, including the District of Columbia not as a state), Alaska, Hawaii, the five insular territories of Puerto Rico, Northern Mariana Islands, U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, and minor outlying possessions. [1]
In the United States, the government of each of the 50 states is structured in accordance with its individual constitution. In turn, each state constitution must be grounded in republican principles. Article IV, Section 4, Clause 1 of the United States Constitution tasks the federal government with assuring that each state's government is so ...