New York Senate Democrats are mulling a plan that would change the process of filling vacancies to the state’s highest court, along the lines of the same long-held federal process that allows presidents to appoint Supreme Court justices directly to the Senate, its leader said Tuesday.

As such, the party may take steps to start the two-year process of eliminating the New York State Commission on Judicial Nomination, which was created in 1977 by an amendment to the state constitution to investigate the qualifications of applicants to the New York Court of Appeals.