Witnesses testifying at a Senate hearing on universal injunctions Tuesday suggested the U.S. Supreme Court is the best forum for addressing the use of the national orders, after two conservative justices recently called for their court to review the legal tool.

Justice Neil Gorsuch, in an opinion joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, recently described the current trend of injunctions as creating "chaos," and called for the court to review the national orders "at the appropriate juncture." Thomas previously spoken out against universal injunctions in the Supreme Court's ruling upholding a travel ban from visitors from several majority-Muslim countries.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor last week also chided the Trump administration for repeatedly coming to the U.S. Supreme Court seeking stays on district court injunctions.

"It is hard to say what is more troubling: that the government would seek this extraordinary relief seemingly as a matter of course, or that the court would grant it," she wrote.

Sen. Ted Cruz used Tuesday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing to criticize Sotomayor for her dissent, accusing a "handful of judges" as acting as part of the "resistance movement" against the Trump administration in blocking its policies.

He compared her opinion, which he noted no other justices signed onto, to "an arsonist complaining about the noise from the fire trucks."

Experts at Tuesday's hearing agreed that injunctions have impacted executive actions from both political parties, largely the Obama and Trump administrations. But critics said there should be action taken to curb the use of the tools, whereas advocates said injunctions should not be removed entirely.

Jesse Panuccio, a partner with Boies Schiller Flexner who was previously a top DOJ official under former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, said the use of injunctions is turning courts into a "policy making body," rather than adjudicators with rulings that should only impact parties in a case.

Samuel Bray, a law professor with the University of Notre Dame who has been a public opponent of injunctions, further said the use of the court orders is an attempt to resolve "executive overreach" spurred by a lack of action by Congress on important topics, like immigration.

Sen. Mike Lee agreed with Panuccio's remarks, decrying an increased use of executive action in recent decades rather than legislative solutions.

"While I do fault courts that abuse their injunctive authority in this way, it's entirely foreseeable and in some ways it's a problem that was willfully created by Congress in deciding not to act," Lee said.

But other witnesses were less critical of injunctions. D.C. Solicitor General Loren AliKhan and University of San Diego law professor Mila Sohoni, both said there are times when the national orders are well-suited to protect parties and minimize confusion.

AliKhan in particular spotlighted immigration policies as needing uniformity, as to avoid a "patchwork where an immigrant in one jurisdiction has one outcome and an immigrant in another has a different one."

Lawmakers at the hearing indicated they would rather the justices come up with the solution for the problem.

"The courts in turn have been faced with this quandary, about how to deal with deeply felt and possibly egregious and hurtful actions," Sen. Richard Blumenthal said. He suggested that the Supreme Court "should come up with better criteria" on when an injunction should have a nationwide reach.

However, Sen. Mazie Hirono raised concerns about whether Supreme Court justices are going too far in "signalling" that they are seeking challenges that would raise the spectre of injunctions, particularly for immigration, labor and environmental issues.

Both Bray and University of Michigan law professor Nicholas Bagley, also a critic of injunctions, said the Supreme Court may take up the matter soon. But they urged lawmakers to not let the issue fall to the court entirely, as it's unclear exactly when the justice could agree to hear a case that places the issue of injunctions directly before them or come up with a solution.

Correction: This story has been updated to properly attribute a statement to D.C. Solicitor General Loren AliKhan.