Campbell et al. v. Boyreau (1858) 62 U.S. 223, was a suit at law in a Circuit Court. The whole case having been submitted to the court upon the trial, and a jury having been expressly waived by agreement of parties, evidence was offered on both sides. The court found the facts, and then decided the questions of law arising upon such facts, and gave judgment for the plaintiff. The defendants sued out a writ of error from this court. There were in the record bills of exceptions, which showed exceptions by the defendants to the admissibility of evidence, and exceptions to the construction and legal effect which the court gave to certain instruments in writing. But this court held that, in the mode of proceeding which the parties had seen proper to adopt, none of the questions, whether of fact or of law, decided by the Circuit Court, could be re-examined by this court upon a writ of error. The opinion of the Supreme Court, delivered by Chief Justice Taney, cited to that effect Guild v. Frontin, 18 How. 135; Suydam v. Williamson, 20 How. 427, 432, and Kelsey v. Forsyth, 21 How. 85, and said: "The finding of issues of fact by the court upon the evidence is altogether unknown to a common law court, and cannot be recognized as a judicial act. Such questions are exclusively within the province of the jury; and if, by agreement of parties, the questions of fact in dispute are submitted for decision to the judge upon the evidence, he does not exercise judicial authority in deciding, but acts rather in the character of an arbitrator. And this court, therefore, cannot regard the facts so found as judicially determined in the court below, nor examine the questions of law, as if those facts had been conclusively determined by a jury or settled by the admission of the parties. Nor can any exception be taken to an opinion of the court upon the admission or rejection of testimony, or upon any other question of law which may grow out of the evidence, unless a jury was actually impanelled, and the exception reserved while they were still at the bar. The statute which gives the exception in a trial at common law gives it only in such cases. And as this court cannot regard the facts found by the judge as having been judicially determined in the court below, there are no facts before us upon which questions of law may legally and judicially have arisen in the inferior court, and no questions, therefore, open to our revision as an appellate tribunal. Consequently, as the Circuit Court had jurisdiction of the subject matter and the parties, and there is no question of law or fact open to our re?xamination, its judgment must be presumed to be right, and on that ground only affirmed." The Supreme Court pointed out that courts of the United States page 226 "are regulated in their modes of proceeding according to the rules and principles of the common law." On the same page it is further stated: "The finding of issues in fact by the court upon the evidence is altogether unknown to a common-law court, and cannot be recognised as a judicial act. Such questions are exclusively within the province of the jury; and if, by agreement of parties, the questions of fact in dispute are submitted for decision to the judge upon the evidence, he does not exercise judicial authority in deciding, but acts rather in the character of an arbitrator."