Blind grading is a myth.

If a student is outspoken in class, or just plain spoken, but with a point of view that the professor finds politically incorrect, it isn't hard to figure out who wrote which exam. There's no "risk" to the professor to figure out which paper sounds like who, and grade accordingly.

I was graded based on ideology by my communist professors as a 1L but I quickly caught on. Second and third year, I made an effort to sound like Ralph Nader, and I got a near perfect GPA. In one class, my professor just about announced that I and another right-wing kid were going to fail; he looked at us and apologized for being unable to teach everyone. I got an A, and surprised him with how wonderfully progressive I truly was. My friend wrote an equally insightful, coherent, but honest exam answer, and got a C.

Many of my students are actually quite happy to get an adjustment for class participation because they want to diversify the factors that go into their final grade. Adjustment for class participation not only encourages work during the semester, but also reduces the element of randomness and luck in grading. If you came to all classes prepared, asked thoughtful questions (and yes, we can tell which questions are thoughtful and which are nonsense, give us some credit here), and otherwise demonstrated steady diligent work throughout the semester, you will not get hit with a very low grade just because you had a bad case of flu on the day of the exam or got nervous and misread the hypothetical.

I find it ironic that the same students who complain that their entire grade hinges on the performance during a single 3.5-hour exam also complain about us using anything other than final exam in grading. And no, I cannot use blindly-graded midterm to diversify grading (that would be my first-best outcome): our school does not allow me to hire a TA to grade student exams. I have no physical capacity to grade 120 midterm exams and give meaningful feedback in the middle of the semester. So, class participation is it: it's not ideal, but better than alternatives.

I think this thread hit on several tensions in law teaching. First, I recognize that classes can get hijacked, as well as post-class podium time. I think that some law professors are adept at not letting a few students monopolize class. However, most law professors I know would prefer that anyone talk in class than no one. Monopolizers generally are born because a vacuum was there to be filled. Please don't sit in silence. Raise your hand, and then the professor has a good reason to cut the monopolizer short.
Second, to some extent law school learning is about self-help. If you have a question, ask it. If you have a post-class question, stick around after class or come to office hours. I never leave the classroom until I've heard every question. If your patience is shorter than mine, then come to office hours. I sit every week in my office hours, and nobody comes. (Until of course, the week that I have a dr. appt. or something.)
Also, every student has the opportunity to look at their exam. I don't post the best exam paper, but I create a model outline that you can look at it if you come to my office. Out of 43 students, I think I had 3 students come and look at their grades (high, low, and middle). I have not wanted to post a model answer because of thoughts that I may want to use similar questions in the future. I may weigh that against the benefit in the future, though.

"I had a wacky, psychotic professor who graded me unfairly and therefore all blind grading is a myth." That's the gist? Any professor can be unfair -- as noted, even with blind grading, an unfair professor can grade you on your ideology. A well-defined, transparent system of adjusting blind grades (of the sort I mentioned above) would control these aberrational situations. We don't need to ban all discretion in grading, as if it were possible to do so (given, as noted, the discretion in grading even blind exams).

Law students: there's so much in American legal education worthy of reform and discussion (e.g., depending on the institution: teaching quality; practical skills education; ideological bias; and all the studies showing the high rate of stress and mental distress that law school causes) that "blind grading isn't REALLY 100% blind" should be about 897th on your list of 893 topics on which to complain. I think some of what's really going on here is mistargeted complaining by justifiably disgruntled law students. Channel your disgruntlement (?) toward the real problems, not this sideshow.

This comment is in response "Been there." Let's call the kind of bias that you are talking about "ideological bias." Your hypothesis is that professors have ideological biases that affect grading. These biases could be conscious or subconscious. I'm sure others have stories of instances where you clashed with the professor on an ideological basis and you recieved an unpleasant grade. I have no way of proving or disproving your hypothesis. I can think of examples of people I knew in law school who clashed with professors but still did well, but that doesn't disprove your hypothesis either. I don't teach that way or write exams that way. My exams generally require you to analyze both sides of a cause of action, so you would have to know different kinds of arguments.

I will say that when I'm grading, a thought will come into my head like, "I bet this is Mr. X's paper," but I'm always wrong.

I don’t have time to form a write a point-by-point breakdown, but I should state that in my experience, ideological bias can be found for all sort of political and religious views, but it pretty rare in law school I am not going to get on the “I am a Conservative and so oppressed” waaaamulance, and I don’t think anyone else should either.

OF COURSE you have to know both sides of the argument, identify all the issues, and carefully consider everything, etc. etc.

But if, in a torts class, after exhaustive analysis, the question asks, "how would you decide this case? who wins?" the answer is always PLAINTIFF. It also doesn't hurt to kick in a comment about the joys of wealth redistribution.

I don't know you and I'm sure that YOU aren't biased.... but I went from near the bottom of the class first year to the very top in years 2 and 3, and it wasn't because of steroids or any notable improvement in my handwriting. Sorry, but most law school profs are ideological hacks. (If you're wondering, let's just say I went to a top 10-15 law school, so this isn't hinterlands behavior.)

I've taught at a few schools. At Boalt, you grade exams anonymously, and then get the ordinal rank with names, at which point you can move students up or down based on participation. I announce at the beginning of the semester that class participation will be especially important in moving up high Passes to Honors grades, and I provide an estimate, based on prior years experience, of how many students will move up to Honors grades and how many low Honors grades will move down to Pass. I tell them that because it's only fair to inform them, and I adjust the grades because class participation makes the class much better for all students.

At Santa Clara, you must submit a list of plus points and minus points for class participation at the same time you submit the blindly graded exams. So I don't have quite the same fine control as I do at Boalt.

As I recall, Stanford was more similar to Boalt than to Santa Clara on that point.

Since this thread has degenerated from blind grading into ideological-bias discussion, here is the question. Is it ethical to steer your students away from other profs who you know won't be a good ideological match for them? A fair number of my first-year students asked me for recommendations on upper-level courses. So far, I’ve been recommending them to “take people, not subjects” – go for the most interesting profs no matter what they teach. By “most interesting” I always mean “most academically accomplished” – smart, engaging, provocative, deep. Should I also start mentioning their politics, for full disclosure? I just told a conservative future prosecutor to take Evidence with a very liberal prof, whom I respect greatly for the sheer brain power. Good idea?

Most of the analysis so far seems to focus on whether grading on participation is fair or not. That’s not surprising. However, I wish that professors would consider the fact that this practice seems to have a significant, and bothersome, side effect – namely, the encouragement of “participation” designed to impress the professor.

I think it’s safe to say that a law school student body includes a significant number of people in two categories: (a) highly-motivated students driven to get high grades; and (b) opinionated people who like to hear themselves talk (there’s no doubt some overlap between those groups). Offering the possibility of higher grades in exchange for class participation triggers endless blathering that is clearly designed to win brownie points (either by brown-nosing, or expressing sympathy for the professor’s point of view, or just trying demonstrate that the student did a super-thorough job on his homework).

Whether or not this works, it consumes a substantial portion of instruction time. As best I can recall, there were only a handful of instances where I heard genuinely helpful “analysis” from fellow students. However, I clearly recall spending hours and hours in law school waiting for some idiot(s) to shut up so that we could get on with actual learning. I suspect that most law students would have a similar impression of “class discussion” time.