See http://hg.openjdk.java.net/jdk/jdk/file/12997ebbc0d8/src/hotspot/share/classfile/verifier.cpp#l2007

Verifier::load_class(name) is called only when name is known to be the name of a super class of the current class. At this point, the super class should have already been loaded. Also, the loader of the current class should have already recorded the super class as a dependency.

Therefore, load_class does a lot of work (such as resolving the super class by name) that's not necessary. Also, load_class is declared to potentially throw exceptions. This makes code analysis more complicated.

The proposal is to remove load_class and just use the "super" class as found by ClassVerifier::name_in_supers.