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King v. Smith

1968 United States Supreme Court case

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionApr 27, 2026
Entity authorityQ6412414 ↗
Source-derived summary

King v. Smith, 392 U.S. 309 (1968), was a unanimous decision in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) could not be withheld because of the presence of a "substitute father" who visited a family on weekends. The issue before the US Supreme Court involved how the states could determine how to implement a federal program. The court used the term "co-operative federalism." Shapiro v. Thompson, King v. Smith and Goldberg v. Kelly were a set of successful Supreme Court cases that dealt with Welfare, specifically referred to as a part of 'The Welfare Cases'.

Background

Mrs. Sylvester Smith was a Dallas County, Alabama resident who had four children, without a biological father providing support. The father of three of her children had died and the father of her fourth child was not in the picture.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “King v. Smith” is 1968 United States Supreme Court case. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through King, Smith and United, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1968—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1968-06-17. For this dossier, King, Smith and United is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “1968 United States Supreme Court case” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6412414. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1968.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “King v. Smith”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow King v. Smith primary sources, King v. Smith archive and King research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “King v. Smith”?
  2. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
  3. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “King v. Smith” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.