extensive work by five Special Rapporteurs in order for the International Law Commission to reach agreement on the final text of the Draft Articles as a whole, with commentaries. At the same time, the customary international law of state responsibility concerning matters such as detention and physical ill-treatment of aliens and their right to a fair trial has been rendered less important than formerly by the development of international human rights law, which applies to all individuals, whether aliens or nationals. The concept of a general regime of legal responsibility, which the rules of state responsibility have taken on, is an inception of the civil law system and is largely foreign to the common law tradition. Codification The topic of state responsibility was one of the first 14 areas provisionally selected for the ILC's attention in 1949. When the ILC listed the topic for codification in 1953, "state responsibility" was distinguished from a separate topic on the "treatment of aliens", reflecting the growing view that state responsibility encompasses the breach of an international obligation. The ILC's first special rapporteur on state responsibility, F.V. García Amador of Cuba, appointed in 1955 noted, "It would be difficult to find a topic beset with greater confusion and uncertainty." García Amador attempted to return to the traditional focus on responsibility for injury to aliens but his work was essentially abandoned by the ILC when his membership ended in 1961. His successor, Roberto Ago of Italy, reconceptualised the ILC's work in terms of the distinction between primary and secondary rules, and also established the basic organisational structure of what would become the Draft Articles. By focusing on general rules, stated at a high level of abstraction, Ago created a politically safe space within which the ILC could work and largely avoid the contentious debates of the day. From 1969 until his election to the ICJ in 1980, Ago completed work on part 1 of the draft articles, addressing the origin of state responsibility. Most of the thirty-five articles adopted during his tenure are reflected in the final draft. Work on the remainder of the articles proceeded slowly throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. Willem Riphagen of the Netherlands, who served as special rapporteur to 1986, stressed that particular primary rules may specify the consequences of their breach - an idea conveyed by the articles through the recognition of lex specialis. Gaetano Arangio-Ruiz, special rapporteur from