"thejavafreak" wrote : How about do the not-null checking on the JSF form first? That way user are forced the have an input before the form is submitted Well, that would work yes, but shouldn't @Email annotation allow users to not enter any values? Also, in the hibernate validator source code, I saw that null values and empty values are allowed in the EmailValidator and should both pass the validation. View the original post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4075763#... Reply to the post : http://www.jboss.com/index.html?module=bb&op=posting&mode=reply&a...