Why there is no static class in Java

Question

I am new to java. When I was going through language specification I found that static classes cannot be declared, but we can have static inner classes. I am little confused

Answer 1

static is a relative term.

static means "independent of the containing instance". So a static field has the same value, independent of the instance of the class. A static inner class is valid for every instance of the parent class.

But what would a static top level class be "independent of the containing instance" of? There is no containing instance for a top level class. That's why it cannot be static (or, it always is static, depending on your point of view - but in either way, no need to specify it).

Implementation wise, a non-static inner class contains a reference to the containing outer class. Obviously this difference also is not possible for top level classes.