Some points here:1) You don't normally make direct use of ClassLoader, unless you wanna customize the security/access/initialization mechanism of the default class loaders provided. 2) To use java.lang.Class to load a class, simple do this: try { Class cls = Class.forName("MyClass"); Object obj = cls.newInstance(); } catch (....) { } //There is a long list of possible exceptions here. Check JDK API doc for the list.