I had a situation once in my class where my grading rubric prevented a serious argument. A student came to me after a midterm exam to contest his grade. He was not satisfied with the points he had earned and believed that his answers deserved a better grade. I had structured the questions for the exam very carefully and as a result creating a rubric was easy. Each essay question had 7 components, and each component required an accompanying example. Because I had such a specification, I was able to demonstrate to the student that he had ignored certain components in his answers and as a result received the grade he had. This defused what could have be a serious situation, as he clearly saw that the method I used to grade the exam was unbiased and objective.