I've been having almost the same issues as Victor Martin (you can see the questions asked here).

I've got declarative authorization working for just about everything that doesn't involve using conditionals. E.g.

has_permission_on :users, :to => [:edit, :update, :destroy] do
if_attribute :user => is { current_user }
end

Are there any common pitfalls with Declarative Authorization? I'm using authlogic and I'm suspicious the 'current_user' method in the application controller might be the source of the problem.