Compare and Contrast Emma Bovary and Nora Helmer.

In the case of James Smith, a burglar that was found guilty of robbing his next door neighbor appealed his case to the Supreme Court based on the premise that his Fourteenth Amendment right to equal protection under the law was violated when evidence the defendant claimed was seized illegally but not excluded from the court process. The case started when the criminal defendant, Smith, burglarized his next door neighbor’s house. The neighbor being sure Smith was responsible for stealing his belongings kicked down the front door where he discovered all of his stolen property. The neighbor then called the police who attained a search warrant before seizing the stolen goods from the home of the defendant. The Fourteenth Amendment provides several different protections to the United States citizen which includes due process and equal protection under the law. Due process is hard to define but basically involves all of the rights afforded to the citizen in legal proceedings. Due process, in the context of the United States criminal justice system, refers to how and why laws are enforced (Mount, 2010). For example citizens have the right to have an attorney present during a speedy trial that is presided over by a judge and decided by an impartial jury. The framers of the constitution established the Bill of Rights and additional amendments of the Constitution to ensure the due process and individual rights and freedoms of the citizen were protected from the power of the government. The Fourteenth Amendment also provides the citizen with the guarantee that they will receive equal protection under the law. In other words all United States citizens are afforded the right to be treated equally under the law. While the amendment originally developed as guarantee to the recently freed slaves it has become an essential right of the average citizen in the century since it was enacted. The Fourteenth Amendment was used as a tool during the Civil Rights Movement to

Cited: Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary. Trans. Mildred Marmur. New York: Penguin Group, 1979. Ibsen, Henrik. A Doll’s House. Four Major Plays. Trans. Rolf Fjelde. New York: Penguin Group, 1992.