PUBLIC "-//Supreme Court of Virginia Archives::Virginia State Law Library Archives//TEXT (US::ViL::vil00022A Guide to the Oral History Interview of Allen L. Lucy, Clerk (retired) of the Supreme Court of Virginia, June 11, 2009)//EN" "vil00022.xml" A Guide to the Oral History Interview of John Thomas Bruce, Office of the Chief Staff Attorney, Supreme Court of Virginia, October 11, 2013 Oral History Interview of John Thomas Bruce, 00033208 Catherine G. OBrion Supreme Court of Virginia Archives, Virginia State Law Library ©2013 By The Virginia State Law Library. All rights reserved.

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Machine-readable finding aid derived from being created directly into EAD, created by Catherine G. OBrion, 2013 November 19 Description is in English 2013-11-21 Converted to schema conforming EAD by dtd2schema.vh.xsl. A Guide to the Oral History Interview of John Thomas Bruce, Office of the Chief Staff Attorney, Supreme Court of Virginia, October 11, 2013 A Collection in the Supreme Court of Virginia Archives, Virginia State Law Library 00033208 Catherine G. OBrion

Virginia State Law Library, Supreme Court of Virginia Archives 2013 Contact information: Virginia State Law Library Supreme Court of Virginia 100 North Ninth Street Richmond, Virginia 23219 URL: http://www.courts.state.va.us/courtadmin/library/home.html Email: LawLibrary@courts.state.va.us Phone: (804) 786-2075 Library staff. Supreme Court of Virginia Archives Descriptive Summary Supreme Court of Virginia Archives, Virginia State Law Library Oral History Interview of John Thomas Bruce, Office of the Chief Staff Attorney, Supreme Court of Virginia, October 11, 2013 00033208 1 digital video recording (1 hour, 47 minutes, 58 seconds); 1 transcript (48 p.) English Supreme Court of Virginia Archives Administrative Information Access Restrictions

Collection is open to research.

Use Restrictions

Because the library is not open to the general public, researchers should contact the library to arrange access to the collection.

Preferred Citation

Oral History Interview of John Thomas Bruce, Office of the Chief Staff Attorney, Supreme Court of Virginia, October 11, 2013, Accession number 00033208, Supreme Court of Virginia Archives, Virginia State Law Library, Richmond, Va.

Acquisition Information

The interview was recorded for the Supreme Court of Virginia Archives in October 2013 and accessioned November 19, 2013.

Biographical/Historical Information

The Supreme Court of Virginia Historical Commission was established in 2006 to preserve and promote the history of the court. Oral history interviews of retired Supreme Court of Virginia justices, Court of Appeals of Virginia judges, other individuals associated with the Virginia courts, and civil rights attorneys were begun in 2007. The project is ongoing.

John Thomas (Jack) Bruce (b. 1951) became Chief Staff Attorney for the Supreme Court of Virginia in 1978. Before that, he was a clerk in the office of Robert Irons, Special Assistant to the Supreme Court of Virginia, and practiced law in Norfolk. A native of Norfolk, he graduated from the College of William and Mary and earned a law degree from the University of Richmond.

 Scope and Content

Oral history interview of John Thomas Bruce by Cassandra Newby-Alexander, Professor of History, Norfolk State University, at the Supreme Court of Virginia in Richmond, October 11, 2013. Bruce talks about growing up among his mother's extended family in Norfolk, Virginia, his education, and his career as an attorney in the Office of the Chief Staff Attorney, first as a law clerk after graduating from law school, and as Chief Staff Attorney from 1978 to 2003. He discusses working with his predecessor Robert Irons, Special Assistant to the Supreme Court of Virginia until his sudden death in 1978; Chief Justice Harry Carrico, Justice A. Christian Compton, and Justice Richard H. Poff, all of whom were based in Richmond, and changes he has witnessed since he began working at the court in the 1970s.

Index Terms Bruce, John Thomas, 1951-. Newby-Alexander, Cassandra. Oral histories (document genres) -- Virginia. Virginia. Supreme Court -- 20th century.