Richard T. Burress
Senior Fellow

Expertise: Law, government programs, legislation

Richard T. Burress is a senior fellow emeritus at the Hoover Institution.

Admitted to practice law before the United States Supreme Court, as well as in Iowa, California, and the District of Columbia, he is an expert in legal issues, government programs, and public policy legislation.

Burress is the author of We the People: The Story of Our Constitutional Convention, The Bill of Rights: James Madison’s Legacy, and The Documents of the American Revolution (in Russian) (Tver Polygraphic Group, 1995). In 1996 The Documents of the American Revolution was translated into Romanian. He has also written extensively on Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War.

He is a member of the American Bar Association and the Society of Former Special Agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and a lifetime member of the Fourth Marine Division Association.

In 1979, he became a member of the Reagan for President Committee and during the 1980 election campaign served as a member of the Administration of Justice Task Force. In February 1985, he was an incorporator of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library Foundation.

He was assistant to President Gerald Ford from 1973 to 1974 and deputy counsel to President Richard Nixon from 1969 to 1971. He was also counsel to the House Republican leadership from 1965 to 1969.

Burress served as staff director of the Republican Policy Committee, minority counsel of the House of Representatives Committee on Education and Labor, deputy assistant general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board, and special agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In 1968 and 1972, Burress was the assistant to the chairman of the Republican National Convention. In 1976 and 1980, Burress was assistant to the permanent chairman of the Republican National Convention.

A Marine Corps veteran of World War II, he served as a lieutenant on Iwo Jima.

Born in Omaha, Nebraska, he received his B.A. degree from the University of Nebraska at Omaha, his J.D. degree from the Law School of the University of Iowa, and his LL.M. from the Graduate School of Law at New York University.