protected Constructors - codesmell

Did you ever try to create an instance of a class with a protected constructor from outside its package?
I ran into this need when working with JPA-Entities of which i wanted to know initial field values. (yeah, i know. kind of black magic...)

It is actually easier, than getting protected Fields:

public static <T> T newInstance(final Class<T> c)
    {
        try
        {
            Constructor<T> constructor = c.getDeclaredConstructor(new Class[] {});
            if (constructor != null)
            {
                constructor.setAccessible(true);
                return constructor.newInstance((Object[]) null);
            }
            else
            {
                throw new IllegalArgumentException("Cannot find empty Contructor for class '" + c.getName() + "'");
            }
        }
        catch (SecurityException e)
        {
            throw ExceptionHelper.wrap(e);
        }
        catch (IllegalArgumentException e)
        {
            throw ExceptionHelper.wrap(e);
        }
        catch (InstantiationException e)
        {
            throw ExceptionHelper.wrap(e);
        }
        catch (IllegalAccessException e)
        {
            throw ExceptionHelper.wrap(e);
        }
        catch (InvocationTargetException e)
        {
            throw ExceptionHelper.wrap(e);
        }
        catch (NoSuchMethodException e)
        {
            throw ExceptionHelper.wrap(e);
        }
    }