Programmer's Guide to Java™ Certification, A: A Comprehensive Primer, Second Edition

7.4. Local Classes

A local class is an inner class that is defined in a block. This could be a method body, a constructor, a local block, a static initializer, or an instance initializer.

Blocks in a non-static context have a this reference available, which denotes an instance of the class containing the block. An instance of a local class, which is declared in such a non-static block, has an instance of the enclosing class associated with it. This gives such a non-static local class much of the same capability as a non-static member class.

However, if the block containing a local class declaration is defined in a static context (i.e., a static method or a static initializer), then the local class is implicitly static in the sense that its instantiation ...