A system and method for using a declarative approach to enforce instance based security in a distributed environment is presented. The invention described herein includes security logic in declarative specifications that, in turn, decouples the security logic from distributed object administration logic. An access manager identifies access requirements by combining object name property keys included in a distributed object with property key specifications included in a declarative specification. In turn, the access manager compares a caller's access attributes with the access requirements to determine whether to create a distributed object instance and allow the caller to invoke a method on the distributed object instance. The access requirements may also include role specifications and method parameter specifications.