The European Commission’s 2024 Rule of Law report is yet another indicator of the deterioration of constitutional standards in Slovakia. Next to outlining selected key developments of Slovakia’s illiberalization in 2024, this post underscores how the small jurisdiction’s size in combination with its relatively isolated doctrinal legal academia could hamper the development of robust democratic constitutional discourse and thus legal academics’ contribution to democracy. This is exacerbated by the intricate connection between public law and the Communist Party before 1989 and the legacies thereof on segments of doctrinal legal thinking.