Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin (D-IL) raised his concerns about Supreme Court ethics to Chief Justice John Roberts's face during a closed-door conference on Tuesday.

Durbin was invited to the biannual meeting for the 26-member Judicial Conference, the policymaking body for the federal judiciary, and sat next to Roberts, sources told several outlets on Wednesday.

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The Democratic chairman of the committee gave a five-minute address to members of the conference, according to the outlets, which included the senator lamenting that the Supreme Court had been fraught with an ethical crisis that he said could have been avoided if the justices created an enforceable code of ethics.

Durbin's remarks come as his Democratic colleague, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (RI), has proposed a bill to impose a specific code of ethics on the justices, though it faces steep odds of passing the Senate and the Republican majority in the House.

Investigative reports have uncovered a trail of perceived ethical lapses by the justices in recent months.

Ethics concerns sprung up this year in April with a ProPublica report revealing Justice Clarence Thomas failed to disclose luxury travel paid by Republican donor Harlan Crow. This summer, Justice Samuel Alito was revealed to have accepted a fishing trip to Alaska and has been accused of owning company stock while ruling on cases that impact those industries. And Justice Sonia Sotomayor was exposed by the Associated Press for telling her staff to prod institutions such as libraries and schools to purchase her books.

Democrats like Durbin and Whitehouse, who think the court needs an enforceable code of ethics, point to historic low approval ratings of the Supreme Court that sank around the time the 6-3 Republican-appointed majority on the high court upended abortion access precedent under Roe v. Wade last summer.

But some critics of these Democratic calls have suggested the recent ethical concerns are largely a ploy to attack the high court because they disagree with its conservative tilt, one source told CNN on Wednesday, which first reported about Durbin's invitation to the meeting.

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Chief Circuit Judge Lavenski Smith, chairman of the Executive Committee of the Judicial Conference who briefed the press on Tuesday, said all discussions about ethics during the meeting were raised by guests and that no members of the policymaking body engaged in such discussions.

Durbin's close contact with Roberts comes just days after Whitehouse sent a letter to the chief justice asking him to open some level of investigation into Alito, who made remarks to the Wall Street Journal this summer saying Congress lacks the ability to impose an enforceable code of ethics on the justices through legislation.