These methods are implicitly declared as part of any enum type. JDK-6548433 added an explanations of them in a "Note that..." paragraph in the specification of the Enum.valueOf() method. This is good as far as it goes, but it's hard to find. The explanation should be given in the Enum class doc, and more specific information should given about the implicitly declared methods. Of course, the JLS should still be deferred to as the defining specification.