After the defeat of the semi-authoritarian majority in 1998, Slovakia seemed to move towards a fragile, aspirational consensus on the significance of the rule of law. Since the victory of illiberal parties in the 2023 elections, constitutional value decline accelerates. The Constitution of Slovakia entrusts the Slovak Constitutional Court to guard these values. Against this backdrop, this article contributes to understanding the Slovak Constitutional Court’s performance amidst the post-2023 illiberal surge as an important case for understanding the societal potential and role of constitutional courts. Its theoretical underpinnings depart from recognizing the political character of constitutional adjudication in a broader sense as public institutional action responsible for advancing the rule of law beyond minimalism, coupled with the discursive resistance to the ‘language of politics’ by constitutional courts. The article identifies key representations of ‘politics’ in the 2024 Slovak Constitutional Court decision on the amendments to criminal law, and in public reflections of this judgment, which concerned a flagship intervention by the illiberal executive. The analysis shows that the Slovak Constitutional Court was at pains to present the image of not only a non-partisan, but even an apolitical body, thus trying to escape from the inevitably political nature of constitutional adjudication. This image generated by the Slovak Constitutional Court risks to deepen the disconnect between narrower notions of legality on the one hand and broader ideas of constitutionalism and the rule of law on the other. It also complicates the avenues for constitutional courts to challenge practices that undermine constitutional values.