President of State Bar Association 1910-1911 Andrew Alexander Bruce is a pure-blooded Scotchman by descent. He was born on April 15th, 1866, in a mountain fort in Southern India, his father, Edward Archibald Bruce, being a general in the British army. His mother was Anne Young McMaster, the daughter of Colonel Robert McMaster, who was also in the British service in India. He was early sent to Europe to be educated, but his father having died when he was but a few years old and his mother dying a few years afterward, he was cast entirely upon his own resources when only fifteen years of age. At this age he emigrated to America, and on landing in New York found himself entirely alone, without friends and without money. He went to Minnesota and there worked for a number of years as a farm laborer in Winona county, and for a year or two as bookkeeper at Winona, Minn. In 1886 he entered the University of Wisconsin, and later graduated from both the academic and law departments of that institution. He worked his entire way through the University of Wisconsin by manual labor, stenographic work and corresponding for the newspapers. While in the law school, he acted as secretary to the judges of the supreme court of Wisconsin. Since that time he spent about ten years in the active practice of the law in Illinois, and for two years thereof was attorney for the Illinois State Board of Factory Inspectors. He was largely instrumental in the passage and enforcement of the anti-sweatshop and child-labor laws of both Illinois and Wisconsin. In addition to his experience as an active practitioner, he has held the positions of professor of law and lecturer in the Chicago Law School, the law school of the University of Wisconsin and the law school of North Dakota. He was dean of the latter law school for eight years. In November, 1911, he was appointed as an associate justice of the supreme court of North Dakota to fill an unexpired term of one year caused by the resignation of Chief Justice Morgan. In November of the following year he was elected by the people to succeed himself. He has written extensively for the legal magazines and encyclopedias and has done much work on the lecture platform. He has been on some of the more important committees of the American Bar Association, and was a delegate from that association to the World's Congress of Jurists and Lawyers. He was chairman of the Committee on Organization of the Judicial Section of the American Bar Association, and has read several papers before the association. He has been a director of the National Comparative Law Bureau for a number of years, an associate editor of the Central Law Journal, and a member of the National Commission on Uniform State Laws. He has been a vice-president and president of the North Dakota Bar Association, president of the State Board of Bar Examiners, and an honorary member of the Wisconsin Bar Association. He has been a life-long student of social and economic as well as legal affairs. In June, 1899, he was married to Miss Elizabeth Pickett, a native of the state of Kentucky, and is the father of a daughter, Glen Bruce, aged thirteen, and a son, Edward McMaster Bruce, aged nine years. |