"One outcome of this approach is that only minimal airplane transient will result if at any time the crew grabs the controllers and disconnects the autopilot while maintaining controller position"
Regardless of whether the aircraft is fbw or non-fbw ideally this should be the motive behind any aircraft design. Even in fbw aircraft like the a320, which doesn't boast of control surface feedback on the yoke, the moment Autopilot is disconnected the aircraft continues in its established stable flight path under normal circumstances, when the aircraft doesn't suffer from any serious system degradation.
One critical instance I can think of where an active control column or yoke would come in handy is at the time of landing. There have been cases when as a copilot I get to land the aircraft and despite me being confident to pull off a safe landing, the skipper impulsively plays around with the controls. God forbid if we both pitch it up at the most inopportune moment there are plenty of chances of going home with a tail strike(more so on a 321). Some captains, working with the same operator I work for, are reluctant to trust the copilot with landings simply because of the fact that they are not confident with their abilities to react to the copilot's inputs by just judging the changes in the flight path alone.