A federal appeals court has backed Boston College in its case for retaining most of the interview records on Northern Ireland that the British government (backed by U.S. authorities) wanted turned over to help with long term investigations.

The court reduced from 85 to 11 the number of oral history interviews Boston College must provide to British authorities. Scott Jaschik of Inside Higher Ed has the details:

In doing so, the appeals court rejected (as it did in an earlier review of the case) the idea that confidential materials collected for scholarship were entitled to a heightened level of protection from outside subpoenas than would be most other documents. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit said that some “balancing” of conflicting rights could still be in order, and rejected the U.S. government’s contention that there was no need for a court review of the appropriateness of the the subpoenas.

“[W]e rule that the enforcement of subpoenas is an inherent judicial function which, by virtue of the doctrine of separation of powers, cannot be constitutionally divested from the courts of the United States,” said the ruling.

And the appeals court then did just that, reviewing the requests for the 85 documents that a lower court had ordered turned over. Only 11 of those records, the appeals court found, were relevant enough to law enforcement needs to justify turning them over. …..

Chris Bray, a historian who has written extensively on the case, called the decision “very important” because the appeals court “sharply narrowed the archival material to be handed over” and “aggressively rejected” the Department of Justice’s argument that the courts need not review the subpoenas.

The papers at issue are oral history interviews — held in Boston College’s library — that make up what is known as the Belfast Project. The interviews are of figures involved in the violence in Northern Ireland during “the Troubles,” a period from the 1960s through the 1980s. Many of the interview subjects agreed to discuss the roles they played (not all of which may have been legal) based on the idea that they thought the interviews would remain confidential during their lifetimes or for other specified periods of time. British authorities are still investigating some of the incidents of that period, and sought to have the U.S. government subpoena them under the terms of a treaty between Britain and the United States on mutual assistance on crime fighting. British officials have said that they believe the interviews may point to the culpability of specific individuals in violent crimes.