Examples

In the majority of cases, countries are unitary, i.e. like Italy and Sweden, they only have one legal system and no problem will arise. In the case of countries electing to assume or retain composite or federated status, the extent to which each separated regional unit will constitute a State will be determined by whether that unit has a sufficiently significant volume of laws distinguishable from those applied in other units. Hence, in the territorially separated States constituting the United States, the laws are sufficiently distinctive to elevate them to States for this purpose. However, the use of federal law-making powers means that countries may be single units for some purposes, and constituent States for others. Thus, the fact that Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States can and do produce uniform legislation on some topics, does not change the separate status of the States, Canadian provinces, and U.S. States. Dicey and Morris (p26) list the separate States comprising the British Isles: "England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man, Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney, [Hern] and Sark. . . is a separate country in the sense of the conflict of laws, though not one of them is a State known to public international law." But this may be varied by statute. The United Kingdom is one State for the purposes of the Bills of Exchange Act 1882, and Great Britain is a single State for the purposes of the Companies Act 1985. Beale defines "State" as follows (at § 2.1/2.5)

The civilized portion of the earth is divided up into certain units of territory in each of which a particular law proper to that territory alone prevails, and that territory is for legal purposes a unit.

§ 2.2. What Determines the State. – It has been seen that the existence of separate legal units within the dominions of a single sovereign is a fact, the result of historical accidents.

The use of the word "State" for this purpose is not universally accepted. Some countries and individual authors use "country", "territorial unit", "law unit" or "law district", e.g. in the Australian federation, each State and territory is a law district (see Laurie v Carroll (1958) 98 CLR 310 at 331, per Dixon CJ.. Williams and Webb JJ. Because the lex patriae choice of law rule may select the law of a country that contains more than one legal system, there must be rules to determine which of the several possible laws might apply (e.g. a reference to the law of the United States is actually a reference to one of the U.S. States). A suparanational example of an approach to this situation is contained in Article 19 of the Rome Convention on Contractual Obligations:

States with more than one legal system

1. Where a State comprises several territorial units each of which has its own rules of law in respect of contractual obligations, each territorial unit shall be considered as a country for the purposes of identifying the law applicable under this Convention.
2. A State within which different territorial units have their own rules of law in respect of contractual obligations shall not be bound to apply this Convention to conflicts solely between the laws of such units.