Following her graduation in 1964, she briefly worked as an assistant judge in
Gothenburg. Later that year, she moved to Norway as a result of her marriage to Norwegian lawyer and peace activist
Fredrik Heffermehl. Bruzelius became a Norwegian citizen in 1972, and was naturalized through an act of parliament in 1974, a rare procedure that was necessary for appointment of a foreign-born person to higher office in the civil service. She worked in the
Norwegian Ministry of Justice and the Police from 1965 to 1982, and became a principal officer in the ministry's legal affairs department in 1974, an assistant director-general in the department in 1978, and a director-general and head of the ministry's polar department in 1979. Her work in the Ministry of Justice focused on transport legislation and
private international law as well as international law issues related to
Svalbard and the
Norwegian continental shelf where Norway was developing its petroleum industry at the time. She was only the second woman to become a director-general in a government ministry, and the first in the Ministry of Justice. From 1982 to 1987, she worked as a corporate lawyer for the
Nordic Association of Marine Insurers, before returning to central government as a director-general in the
Ministry of Transport and Communications. She was promoted to secretary-general (permanent under-secretary of State), the chief civil servant of the ministry, in 1989 as the first woman to hold such a position in Norway. In 1997, she was appointed by the King-in-Council as Cupreme Court Justice on the
Supreme Court of Norway, and served until 2011. She was also a member of the
Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague from 2004 to 2010. Since 2011, she has been affiliated with the Scandinavian Institute of Maritime Law. She has chaired the
Petroleum Price Board (1987–2004), responsible for setting norm prices for
petroleum produced on the
Norwegian continental shelf. She chairs the Norwegian Financial Services Complaints Board. She was president of the
Norwegian Association for Women's Rights 1978–1984, On 5 February 2008, the Standing Committee on Scrutiny and Constitutional Affairs of the
Norwegian Parliament recommended that a commission be named to investigate and, if warranted, prosecute for
impeachment three of the Norwegian Supreme Court Justices who presided over the cases of
Fritz Moen, a victim of
miscarriage of justice. The three were Bruzelius,
Magnus Matningsdal and
Eilert Stang Lund. However, when the case was treated by the Standing Committee on Justice three months later, it was closed. ==References==