Shin Imai, Osgoode Hall Law School, Toronto, Canada Over the last four years, I have developed an exercise called the “Colour of God’s Shoes”. I attempt to show how a simple question can reveal an enormous amount of information about the world view of the questioner, while the answers to that question can yield almost no useful information to the questioner. This exercise allows students in a non-confrontational (even fun) way to question their own assumptions about what law is and should be. I ask my audience to pretend that I am a judge from another planet, and to write down the answer to a simple question: “What is the colour of God’s shoes?” I collect the answers and read a number of them out loud. Answers range from “brown” to “she does not wear shoes”, to “there is no God”. I first observe how much the question reveals about the questioner. One can tell that, on the judge’s planet, there is a God, God is anthropomorphic, and God wears shoes. The colour of God’s shoes is very important to the inhabitants of that other planet, and the questioner is going to make a judgement about the audience based on the answer to this question. Finally, the question reveals that the judge assumes that the there is only one God (ie. his God), and that the colour of God’s shoes is as important for the audience as it is for him. What do the answers to these questions tell the interplanetary visitor about the audience? First, there is no agreement on the colour of God’s shoes. In fact, there is no agreement on whether God wears shoes, has feet, or is a man or woman. Second, some people do not even try to answer the question. In other words, not only is there a lack of a common understanding, there does not appear to be any appreciation of the importance of the question itself. I point this out to the audience, leaving them very puzzled. They realize that they could not possibly answer that question, no matter how hard they tried, because there is nothing in their culture or background that could help them. Most of the students answered by giving a colour - in other words, they accepted the judge’s premise (that God wore shoes) and tried to give an answer, even though most of them had never thought about God having feet, and their God probably was not depicted as having feet. It is ironic that, in the very effort to be co-operative by answering the question on the judge’s own terms, the members of the audience added to the incoherence of their collective response. So the judge from outer space, did not learn anything from the scores of answers to the question. Yet the audience learned a lot about him. This moment of confusion opens the door for many good discussions. It is through actually experiencing the discomfort of being asked a meaningless question, that the student can appreciate the dangers of asking those questions. I use this exercise to lead into discussions of Aboriginal law. But the exercise could also lead into a reflection on the assumptions that students bring into the class room or the clinic. I have used this exercise in seminars as well as groups of a couple of hundred. Fifteen to twenty minutes will be enough time to introduce and run the demonstration.