Specialist Michael New was a medic assigned to a peacekeeping deployment to Macedonia in 1995, operating under United Nations authority. His unit was ordered to wear United Nations insignia — a blue beret, UN shoulder patches, a UN identification card — over their standard U.S. Army uniforms for the deployment. New refused.
The Argument
New’s position was that the order itself was unlawful — that a soldier could be required to serve under UN operational control without being required to visually identify as a UN, rather than U.S., soldier. It became a minor political cause célèbre, drawing outside advocacy and public attention to what was, at its legal core, a dispute over a hat.
At its legal core, this was a dispute over whether a soldier can be court-martialed over what hat he’s ordered to wear.
The Court-Martial and the Appeal
New was convicted under Article 92(2) for failing to obey a lawful order and given a bad-conduct discharge. He appealed, and the case reached the Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, which affirmed the conviction — holding that the lawfulness of a military order is a question of law for a judge to decide, not a question of fact for a panel to weigh. The real opinion is on the record at the court’s own website.
Why It’s Worth Knowing
Whatever you think about the underlying politics of UN-authorized peacekeeping operations, the legal shape of this case is genuinely useful to understand: a soldier can’t simply decide an order is unlawful and refuse it on his own judgment — that determination sits with a military judge, after the fact, not with the soldier in the moment. New found that out by turning a wardrobe dispute into a federal appellate case.