Would I get into trouble if I give out "too many" A grades?
You won't get into trouble if all your students earn grades of A. It has always been my hope that I'd have a class with all A grades, or even all A and B grades. It has never happened.
If you "give out" all grades of A, someone, perhaps your department chair or the committee you mention, is going to ask you to explain yourself.
Your course (presumably) has a set of learning outcomes. You should assess your students against those learning outcomes, at a level of difficulty suitable to the students' standing, e.g. a greater level of difficulty for seniors than for freshmen. When you've done that, the grades will take care of themselves, and if everyone earns an A, you've done an outstanding job with the course!
Edit: based on the update to the question: For the purpose of providing useful formative feedback, you need to assign a grade to each piece of work you assess. Doing so has the added benefit of covering your posterior. Such grades should be assigned according to a rubric that the students have seen before beginning work. There is a brief example of developing such a rubric here.
Even in a course such as you describe, grades can be assigned granularly and with objectivity. If you've done that, your students will thank you and your defense when questioned by chair or committee is that the students got the grades they earned and earned the grades they got.
There are three reasons your students are all getting straight A's:
- Your testing methods are not good enough and just about everyone can get an A, even if they didn't study or know the material well enough.
- You are just that good of a teacher.
- You have many, many brilliant students.
The first reason is the only one that could get you in trouble. The others are not a concern. You might be asked about it and asked for proof that the methods were adequate, and you should be prepared to present them.
Just keep note of what was given in class and what was given as homework. The exams should be a good indicator of whether it was easy or not to someone who is remotely relevant to the course.
Should I fight for the freedom to assign grades according to my academic judgment, without necessarily following the "typical grade distribution" at my university?
Is this a fight that I could win, and if so, how do I go about winning it?
I'm approaching this question a bit differently, instead of pedagogy let's talk about office politics. I'd humbly suggest fine-tuning this mentality to steer away from being adversary. It's indeed true that most of us found these committees rubber-stamping and paper-pushing, some of them do work as a good quality control and even resources of advice.
However, for the new course that I am teaching, I am wondering if I will be given more leeway in the grade distribution because the course has a small enrollment. I would like to give grades based on the students' performance.
This is the main reason I suggested you to work with the committee. We can't decide if you can have the leeway, they can. I'm not sure what's the office climate is at your place, but generally, I'd suggest:
Prepare your syllabus that has a fully developed assessment scheme. If this is the first time, it's better to have more assessments each with a lower contribution to the final grade. They'd provide more occasions to adjust your question/grading style and opportunities for students to get your style and better understand your requirements.
Schedule a meeting with the chair of that committee, present the scheme. Ask for feedback and express concern about possible fluctuation in grades compared to the historic record; the chair may give you some expected range of change which would be useful. Listen to the chair's advice and concern. Try to reach a conclusion.
After the meeting, send an e-mail follow up to summarize the decision, attach the scheme (or revised scheme.) Save this e-mail.
When class starts, let students know of the expectations required in order to excel. Grading policy and rubrics may be useful to share at this point.
Teach and assign grades. If anything seems awfully off, talk to the dean and/or the chair of the said committee.