Kutak Rock litigation partner Dwyer Arce has been elected as a member of The American Law Institute. With his election on July 1, 2024, Dwyer became the first Kutak Rock attorney elected to The American Law Institute in the firm’s history.
The Institute was created in 1923 by a group of prominent American judges, lawyers, and law professors. Its mission is “to promote the clarification and simplification of the law and its better adaptation to social needs, to secure the better administration of justice, and to encourage and carry on scholarly and scientific legal work.” To further this goal, The American Law Institute publishes numerous treatises intended to summarize and clarify the law, including the Restatements of the Law, Principles of the Law, the Model Penal Code, and the Uniform Commercial Code, among others. The publications of The American Law Institute have had a significant impact on the development of the law. In particular, the Uniform Commercial Code has been adopted as statutory law in nearly every state, and the Restatements of the Law are among the most prominent and influential legal treatises in history, cited over 150,000 times in reported court decisions nationwide.
The American Law Institute’s membership is limited to 3,000 elected members who serve for life. A member is elected following a confidential nomination process based on a “primary criteria of excellence and outstanding professional achievement in his or her area of expertise.” There are also thousands of ex-officio members serving by virtue of their positions, including the justices of the United States Supreme Court, the chief judges of the federal courts of appeals, and the chief justices and bar presidents of each state and U.S. territory and the District of Columbia. Since his election, Dwyer has joined the working groups drafting the Restatement of the Law on Corporate Governance and revising the Uniform Commercial Code.
Before his election to The American Law Institute, Dwyer served as an ex-officio member in his capacity as President of the Virgin Islands Bar Association. Dwyer also serves as State Chair for the Virgin Islands in the American Bar Association Council of Appellate Lawyers, as a member of the Nebraska Supreme Court Committee on Practice & Procedure, and as chair of the Nebraska State Bar Association Practice & Procedure Committee.
Dwyer’s practice focuses on appellate proceedings in state and federal courts nationwide in addition to commercial trial litigation primarily in state and federal courts in Nebraska, Iowa, and the Virgin Islands. Dwyer was recognized as a “Lawyer of the Year” for appellate practice in the 2023 edition of The Best Lawyers in America® and has consistently been recognized for his appellate practice and commercial litigation practice by Best Lawyers®. Before entering private practice, Dwyer served for several years as the senior law clerk to Justice Maria M. Cabret of the Supreme Court of the Virgin Islands.