Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) told MSNBC's "All In" audience on Tuesday that Democrats plan to "reform" the Supreme Court if they win control of Congress after the midterm elections, putting the party's long-simmering campaign to reshape the judiciary squarely on the legislative agenda.
The New Jersey senator floated ethics mandates and term limits for justices as specific targets, framing the current court as an institution operating under "the lowest of ethics laws" while handing down decisions he claimed roll back decades of civil-rights progress.
It was not a throwaway line. Booker's remarks represent the clearest signal yet from a sitting Democratic senator that court restructuring has moved from progressive wish list to party priority, contingent only on the voters handing Democrats the seats to act.
Host Chris Hayes set up the exchange by describing what he called a growing consensus among Democratic voters that "something has to be done about the court." Hayes compared the moment to the Lincoln-Douglas debates, which centered on the Supreme Court's Dred Scott ruling.
"Increasingly, I hear from not just Democratic wonks or people in the legal world, but sort of average Democratic voters, primary voters plugged in people. But the kind of folks who are paying attention that something has to be done about the court... Is this a priority of Democrats for getting power, that something must be done?"
Booker did not hedge. He laid out two specific reform planks, ethics legislation and term limits, and wrapped them in populist language designed to make the proposals sound like common sense rather than institutional warfare.
"Most Americans agree that the highest court in the land should not have the lowest of ethics laws, and that billionaires can routinely shower, Supreme Court justices with gifts from mobile homes to fancy, expensive vacations. We all know that's wrong."
He then pivoted to tenure, arguing that justices cling to the bench "well past perhaps even senility" in hopes of timing their departure to a politically favorable president. "That's why term limits are a good thing as well," Booker said.
The senator closed by tying the court's recent decisions to what he called the suppression of minority voting rights across the South. Without naming a specific ruling, he referenced something the court did "last week" that he said would "eviscerate years and years and years of progress."
"And so, yes, we have to think hard about how we're going to reform the court and bring it back into alignment, especially because they're continuing to do things like we saw last week, eviscerate years and years and years of progress, and throw us back to those dark years, where so many people were successfully suppressing the votes of minority groups throughout the South."
Booker's Tuesday appearance fits a broader pattern of Democratic leaders openly challenging the court's legitimacy. The senator has previously stated that he does not trust the Supreme Court to protect Americans' rights, particularly under a second Trump administration. In earlier remarks, he singled out Trump-appointed justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, citing the court's decision overturning Roe v. Wade.
"I do not trust these Trump-appointed judges," Booker said in those earlier comments, as the Washington Examiner reported. "The last time, he got in there and packed our courts with extreme right-wing folks. I do not trust them to secure our rights. Congress must act."
That same report noted Booker joined Sens. Tammy Duckworth and Patty Murray in introducing legislation to establish a nationwide right to IVF, another move framed as a congressional end-run around a court Democrats view as hostile to their policy goals.
Booker is hardly alone in escalating the rhetoric. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries recently drew sharp rebukes after a House Democrat labeled the Supreme Court "illegitimate," prompting a direct response from former President Trump calling for consequences.
The word "reform" does heavy lifting in Booker's framing. Ethics rules and term limits sound modest. They poll well. They let Democrats present the effort as good-government housekeeping rather than what critics see it as: a bid to neutralize a court that has handed the left a string of losses on abortion, voting rights, and regulatory power.
But the specifics matter. Booker did not mention court-packing, adding seats to dilute the current conservative majority, though that proposal remains popular among progressive activists. He did not detail what ethics legislation would look like or how term limits would apply to sitting justices whose lifetime appointments are enshrined in the Constitution.
Those gaps are telling. Jeffries himself has embraced increasingly aggressive political language without always filling in the policy details behind it. The pattern suggests a party that knows the base wants action against the court but hasn't settled on a plan that can survive constitutional scrutiny, let alone a Senate filibuster.
What Booker's remarks do establish is the political priority. If Democrats win Congress, the court will be a target. The question is whether "reform" stays limited to ethics and term limits or expands into structural changes that would fundamentally alter the balance of power between branches.
Article III of the Constitution grants federal judges tenure "during good Behaviour", language that has been understood for more than two centuries to mean life tenure absent impeachment. Imposing term limits on sitting justices would almost certainly require a constitutional amendment, which needs two-thirds of both chambers and ratification by three-fourths of the states.
That is a far cry from a simple midterm majority. Booker's conditional promise, reform "if" Democrats take Congress, glosses over a procedural reality that makes the pledge far harder to deliver than a cable-news soundbite suggests.
Ethics legislation might face a lower bar, but even there, the separation-of-powers questions are real. The court has historically governed its own conduct. Congressional mandates on judicial ethics would invite immediate legal challenges, likely decided by the very justices the legislation targets.
Recent Supreme Court rulings have already drawn intense political attention, and Democrats have made clear they view the current bench as an obstacle to their legislative agenda on issues from reproductive rights to voting access.
The broader conflict between the court and the Democratic caucus has played out across multiple fronts. Ongoing battles over abortion pill access illustrate how deeply the two branches are now entangled in policy disputes that used to be resolved through legislation rather than judicial combat.
Strip away the populist packaging and Booker's message is straightforward: Democrats want to change the rules because they don't like the outcomes. They lost the long game of judicial nominations. They lost the Dobbs decision. They lost a series of regulatory and voting-rights cases. And rather than win those arguments back through the democratic process, persuading voters, passing laws, amending the Constitution, they want to restructure the institution that keeps ruling against them.
That is not reform. It is leverage shopping. And voters heading into the midterms deserve to understand what is actually on the ballot when a senator promises to bring the court "back into alignment."
Alignment with what? With the Constitution, or with the Democratic Party's policy preferences?
When politicians start talking about "reforming" the branch of government designed to check their power, the people being checked aren't the ones who need reforming.
