Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand is calling for sweeping new checks on the Supreme Court and its power, saying that the recently-uncovered controversies involving some members of the high court have shown its long-standing independence needs to be reigned in.

Gillibrand, D-NY, said in a virtual press conference on Thursday morning that she is supporting legislation that would establish ethics and transparency rules for the Supreme Court and federal judiciary, as well as a bill that would establish 18-year terms for Supreme Court justices.

“Under this bill, a new justice would take the bench every two years, and spend 18 years participating in the most important Supreme Court cases of our time,” Gillibrand said.

The ethics and transparency bill would establish a specific complaint system for when a justice is suspected of an ethical lapse, require more specific accounting of gifts provided to federal justices, require more specific reporting of lobbyist contacts and potential conflicts of interest, and codify the terms under which a justice must recuse themselves from a case before the Supreme Court.

“Together, these bills restore integrity, faith and trust in our nation’s highest court,” Gillibrand said.

Both bills, the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal and Transparency Act and the Supreme Court Biennial Appointments and Term Limits Act, were introduced last year by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, D-Ri., who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Sen. Gillibrand added her name to the term limits bill as a cosponsor on Tuesday, and has supported the ethics bill since February 2023. Neither bill has bipartisan support in either the Senate or the House.

Gillibrand said that while she hasn’t read the specific charges, she is broadly supportive of the recent move from fellow New Yorker, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes, D-Manhattan, to introduce articles of impeachment against Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Anthony Alito, Jr..

Ocasio-Cortez accuses the two justices, both members of the Supreme Court’s conservative bloc, of myriad ethical lapses, including failure to disclose financial income, gifts and property. Ocasio-Cortez accuses Thomas of failing to recuse from matters involving his spouses legal and financial interests, and Alito of failing to recuse himself from cases where he has a personal bias or prejudice.

It’s unlikely that the House, with a Republican majority, would vote to impeach the justices.

“Just reading the news articles, it sounded reasonable,” Gillibrand said, but she didn’t go so far as to say the justices have provably violated the law.

“I think both Alito and Thomas have clearly…,” she paused, then continued. “I think if they broke laws, if they’ve certainly had conflicts of interests, those are factual issues that really would need to be assessed, and you could assess that in an impeachment process.”

Gillibrand said she does have concerns that Thomas and Alito are not objective or impartial, and potentially can’t be effective Supreme Court Justices.

All this comes after the end of a Supreme Court term that saw decisions many Democrats are heavily criticizing. At the top of that list is the recent court decision to rule that the U.S. President has broad protections from criminal prosecution for official actions taken while in office — seemingly isolating former President Donald J. Trump from liability over his alleged role in sparking the riots in Washington D.C. on Jan. 6, 2021.