2. c. 26) was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain which made English (instead of Law French and Latin) the obligatory language for use in the courts of England and in the court of exchequer in Scotland.

The Act followed a medieval law from 1362 (the Pleading in English Act 1362[1]), which had made it permissible to debate cases in English, but all written records had continued to be in Latin.

[3] It never applied to cases heard overseas in the court of admiralty.

A similar act was passed on 22 November 1650 by the Rump Parliament during the Commonwealth of England: Act for turning the Books of the Law and all Process and Proceedings in Courts of Justice into the English Tongue.

Despite this repeal, in 2013 the Supreme Court of Canada held that the Act still applied in British Columbia, as the law of England: "The 1731 Act was received into B.C.