Taken from Sun's JLS:
There is also a special null type, the type of the expression null, which has no name. Because the null type has no name, it is impossible to declare a variable of the null type or to cast to the null type. The null reference is the only possible value of an expression of null type. The null reference can always be cast to any reference type. In practice, the programmer can ignore the null type and just pretend that null is merely a special literal that can be of any reference type.
1) A null type does exist inside Java.
2) It only holds value for people writing JVMs and such, not for standard Web/Application development.
3) "Valid" is in the eye of the test designer/test grader.
Todd Killingsworth