Is it possible to do good "back-end moderation" of comments on a high-traffic blog?

At Volokh Conspiracy, Orin Kerr goes on at some length on the subject but ends up saying, in a word: no.

My blog gets about the same amount of traffic as his. (A little more, actually, lately.) And with Meade's help, my blog now goes with "back-end moderation," as discussed here. It was hard to get around the realization that this is the best approach and that it can actually be done. It does involve paying a lot of attention, applying judgment, and remembering who's said what and what you've done about it in the past. This is a behind-the-scenes role, and maybe it's too Meade-specific for other bloggers to use. But it's working for me.