This chapter sets out the relevant aspects of the Canadian refugee system, in a discussion that also highlights what is familiar, and what is decidedly unfamiliar, about the process of accepting or rejecting allegations in refugee status decision-making. Like many legal decision-makers, adjudicators deciding refugee cases spend most of their time trying to establish facts. Their task, however, is uniquely difficult. They are required to assess risk, an inherently uncertain exercise, in a context in which there is exceptional room for doubt: they typically have little information and no expert tools with which to analyse it. This chapter explains the case study’s approach and concludes with an overview of its findings, which suggest that this tension between the familiar and the unfamiliar lies at the root of the divisions within Canadian law on the question of which mistake to prefer.