The Answer in Question
The answer on politics.se supported its claims by citations and links to the Wikipedia article on Standing and the LII page. But the Wikipedia article while not specifically mentioning a civil vs a criminal context refers over and over to the standing of the plaintiff, not of the prosecutor. The LII article does the same. Neither discusses any limits on criminal prosecutions.
Standing of a Prosecutor
I can find no case where a prosecution has been dismissed for a lack of standing on the part of the prosecutor or the government. Nor can I find any law review article, or scholarly work, or indeed any other published work which asserts such a requirement. I find only that the prosecution must show the existence of a valid and constitutional law, and probable cause to believe that the defendant has violated it, in order to commence a prosecution. No legal source even seriously discusses the possibility of a prosecutor needing to prove any sort of individual injury. The closest is the Hartnett article, cited below, where this is dismissed as "absurd" and such an argument is predicted to be laughed out of court, if anyone were so foolish as to make it.
Standing: a Fairly Recent Concept
Lujan
One should remember that the requirement of standing is a relatively recent development in US law. Thew three part test cited in the answer to this question by Ted Wrigley derives from Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife (90-1424), 504 U.S. 555 (1992). That was a civil case, challenging a regulatory interpretation of the Endangered Species Act. The cases cited in Lujan to define standing all seem to be civil cases, and Lujan also speaks of the standing of the plaintiff and the opinion says:
When the suit is one challenging the legality of government action or inaction, the nature and extent of facts that must be averred (at the summary judgment stage) or proved (at the trial stage) in order to establish standing depends considerably upon whether the plaintiff is himself an object of the action (or forgone action) at issue.
Fairchild
The concept of standing as a separate requirement for bringing a legal action seems to have been first declared in Fairchild v. Hughes, 258 U.S. 126 (1922). That case was one where Charles S Fairchild sued the then Secretary of State Charles Evan Hughes (later Chief justice) to prevent him from certifying the ratification of the 19th amendment to the US constitution, guarantying the vote to women. in that opnion Justice Brandeis wrote:
Plaintiff's alleged interest in the question submitted is not such as to afford a basis for this proceeding. It is frankly a proceeding to have the Nineteenth Amendment declared void. In form it is a bill in equity; but it is not a case, within the meaning of § 2 of Article III of the Constitution, which confers judicial power on the federal courts, for no claim of plaintiff is
brought before the court[s] for determination by such regular proceedings as are established by law or custom for the protection or enforcement of rights, or the prevention, redress, or punishment of wrongs.
See In re Pacific Railway Commission, 32 F. 241, 255, quoted in Muskrat v. United States, 219 U. S. 346, 219 U. S. 357. The alleged wrongful act of the Secretary of State said to be threatening is the issuing of a proclamation which plaintiff asserts will be vain, but will mislead election officers. The alleged wrongful act of the Attorney General said to be threatening is the enforcement, as against election officers, of the penalties to be imposed by a contemplated act of Congress which plaintiff asserts would be unconstitutional. But plaintiff is not an election officer, and the State of New York, of which he is a citizen, had previously amended its own Constitution so as to grant the suffrage to women, and had ratified this amendment. Plaintiff has only the right, possessed by every citizen, to require that the government be administered according to law and that the public moneys be not wasted. Obviously this general right does not entitle a private citizen to institute in the federal courts a suit to secure by indirection a determination whether a statute, if passed, or a constitutional amendment about to be adopted will be valid.
This is clearly not in a criminal context.
Bond
Standing is sometimes an issue in a criminal case, but it seems invariably to be an issue of the standing of the defendant to challenge a particular law or regulation. in Bond v. United States, 564 U.S. 211 (2011) a criminal defendant challenged the constitutionality of a Federal criminal statute, claiming that it violated the 10th amendment by infringing upon state sovereignty. This claim was dismissed by the trial court and the Circuit Court of Appeals for lack of standing, but the US Supreme Court wrote:
One who seeks to initiate or continue proceedings in federal court must demonstrate, among other requirements, both standing to obtain the relief requested, see Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U. S. 555, 560–561 (1992), and, in addition, an “ongoing interest in the dispute” on the part of the opposing party that is sufficient to establish “concrete adverseness.” Camreta v. Greene, 563 U. S. ___, ___ (2011)
In that part of its analysis, and throughout its opinion, the Tennessee Electric Court [in 1939] stated that the problem with the power companies’ suit was a lack of “standing” or a “cause of action.” It treated those concepts as interchangeable. E.g., id., at 139 (no “standing” because no “legal cause of complaint”); id., at 139–140 (no “standing” without “a cause of action or a right to sue”); id., at 142 (“no standing,” no “right to sue for an injunction”); id., at 144 (no Tenth Amendment “standing” and no Ninth Amendment “cause of action” for same reasons); see also Bellia, Article III and the Cause of Action, 89 Iowa L. Rev. 777, 826–830 (2004).
The Court held that Bond did have standing to invoke the Tenth Admendment, writing:
The recognition of an injured person’s standing to object to a violation of a constitutional principle that allocates power within government is illustrated, in an analogous context, by cases in which individuals sustain discrete, justiciable injury from actions that transgress separation-of-powers limitations.
...
Individuals have “no standing to complain simply that their Government is violating the law.” Allen v. Wright, 468 U. S. 737, 755 (1984). It is not enough that a litigant “suffers in some indefinite way in common with people generally.” Frothingham v. Mellon, 262 U. S. 447, 488 (1923) (decided with Massachusetts v. Mellon). If, in connection with the claim being asserted, a litigant who commences suit fails to show actual or imminent harm that is concrete and particular, fairly traceable to the conduct complained of, and likely to be redressed by a favorable decision, the Federal Judiciary cannot hear the claim. Lujan, 504 U. S., at 560–561. These requirements must be satisfied before an individual may assert a constitutional claim; and in some instances, the result may be that a State is the only entity capable of demonstrating the requisite injury.
In this case, however, where the litigant is a party to an otherwise justiciable case or controversy, she is not forbidden to object that her injury results from disregard of the federal structure of our Government.
This discusses standing as something that an individual litigant has (or lacks), not something that a case has, nor that a prosecutor requires.
Hartnett article
In "The Standing of the United States: How Criminal Prosecutions Show That Standing Doctrine Is Looking for Answers in All the Wrong Places" from the Michigan law Review (published by the University of Michigan) author Edward A. Hartnett* writes:
Numerous scholars have demonstrated that insistence on a 'personal injury in fact' as a requirement of Article III is a relatively recent invention. They point to a long history in English courts, in the courts of the several states, and in the federal courts themselves of judicial proceedings brought by those who have not suffered any such individualized injury in fact.
Hartnett cites particularly so-called qui tam suits brought by a "relator" or "informer" who alleges a violation of law by someone else who harms the government (not the relator), and who receives part of the fine or damage payment if the suit is successful. Such suits in the US are now largely grought under the federal False Claims Act (31 USC §§ 3729-3733 (1994)), but have a history going back long before the foundation of the US. Hartnett notes that US courts have struggled to find any individual standing for such suits, and have more or less waved the problem away. Hartnett writes:
In a qui tam action, an individual who has herself suffered no harm brings an action on her own behalf as well as on behalf of the government. Indeed, the term qui tam is short for "qui tam pro domino rege quam pro se ipso sequitur" - "who as well for the lord the king as for himself sues."
...
Most scholars reach the same conclusion from this history as
Justice Harlan did in his dissent in Flast v. Cohen (392 U.S. 83, 120 (1968)): there is nothing in the "judicial power," or "cases" and "controversies" language that requires the person bringing the action to suffer an injury in fact.
Hartnett quote Raoul Berger, Standing to Sue in Public Actions: Is It a Constitutional Requirement?, 78 YALE LJ. 816 (1969);
In sum, the notion that the constitution demands
injury to a personal interest as a prerequisite to attacks on allegedly unconstitutional action is historically unfounded . ... There may well be policy arguments in favor of a 'personal
interest' limitation on standing, but they cannot rest on historically-derived constitutional compulsions.
and Steven L. Winter, The Metaphor of Standing and the Problem of Self-Governance, 40 STAN. L. RE.v. 1371 (1988).
A fuller account of our history shows that article III was not limited to the kinds of private disputes characterized by standing. (emphsis added)
Hartnett goes on to discuss the criminal contest:
Despite its apparent reasonableness under current Supreme
Court doctrine, I submit that no federal judge, if pressed, would seriously contend that Article III requires that the United States must suffer an injury in fact that is "personal," "concrete and particularized," and "actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical" before litigation on its behalf can be brought in federal court. And no federal judge would contend that injury to the United States be more than an "abstract ... injury to the interest in seeing that the
law is obeyed ...." 3 6 My point of pressure is a federal criminal prosecution.
...
Suppose a new assistant federal defender, steeped in the
Supreme Court's modern standing doctrine, moves to dismiss each
of the prosecutions brought against her clients on the grounds that the United States lacks standing. She argues that the United States lacks a personal, concrete, and particularized injury in fact and therefore there is no case or controversy within the jurisdiction of the federal courts. ... But after the laughter subsided, what would the prosecutor and the judge say? What is the "concrete and particularized" injury in fact suffered by the United States that gives it standing to bring a criminal prosecution?
...
in the vast majority of criminal prosecutions, the United States is not seeking redress for this kind of an injury to
itself.
Perhaps one might be tempted to say that the injury in fact required by Article III is the one suffered by the victim of the crime: for example, the person who was kidnapped and taken across state lines41 or the person who was defrauded by a pyramid scheme using the U.S. Mails. On this theory, the United States has a form of third-party standing allowing it to redress the injuries suffered by others. But this approach is deeply flawed.
...
At this point, even a patient judge (or reader) might be ready to throw up her hands and say, "The United States isn't any ordinary litigant. A federal criminal prosecution is not designed to remedy the injury to any particular victim, but rather to remedy an injury done to the community. It is wrong to try to shoehorn the United States in the mold of a common law private litigant. It is the sovereign, seeking to vindicate the general public interest in compliance with the law. ...
... Article III cannot sensibly be read to prohibit the United States from vindicating its sovereign interests in its own courts. ...
Courts do not exist solely to resolve private disputes or to resolve claims by injured individuals against the government or government officials. Instead, as criminal prosecutions attest, a significant role of courts is simply to enforce the sovereign's law in particular cases.
... Article III extends the judicial power of
the United States to certain "cases" as well as certain "controversies." A number of scholars suggest that the term "cases" in Article III includes criminal prosecutions, while the term "controversies" does not. If they are right, then the foregoing critique, relying as it does on the example of criminal prosecutions, shows only that the word "case" in Article III cannot reasonably be understood to require a personal, concrete, and particularized injury in fact. It tells us nothing about whether the word "controversy" in
Article III can be understood to require this kind of injury.
In criminal cases (and perhaps more generally in Article III
"cases"), the judiciary is enforcing the sovereign's law rather than umpiring a preexisting dispute. Thus, criminal prosecutions demonstrate that, at least when exercising jurisdiction over the
"cases" enumerated in Article III, nothing in Article III limits the use of the federal judicial power to enforcement of the rights of individuals or prohibits the use of the federal judicial power to enforce the majoritarian sovereign will.
In short, if - as all concede - the United States can prosecute
crimes in the federal courts, then a "case" within the meaning of Article III must include litigation that is based on nothing more than the "harm to the common concern for obedience to law," and the "abstract... injury to the interest in seeing that the law is obeyed."
Hartnett goes on to argue that current standing law is inconsistent and should be changed from a requirement of Article II jurisdiction to a principle of statutory construction derived from Article I, that standing exists where Congress has granted it or where the courts infer that it should have been granted and that the "injury in fact" rules should apply only where Congress has not provided an explicit right of private action, citing several of Justice Harlan's dissents saying that:
There is much to be said for Justice Harlan's approach74 - not the least of which is that it was too conservative for the Warren Court and too liberal for the Rehnquist Court.
Federal criminal prosecutions may have something to tell us
about this debate. For one of the earliest, most significant, and most enduring decisions the federal judiciary has ever made was to leave the creation of criminal rights of action to Congress and to refuse to recognize a common law of federal crimes.
In any case Hartnett takes it as bedrock law that there is no standing requirement for a federal criminal prosecution beyond the assistance of a constitutional federal law, and a credible allegation of the violation nod such a law -- that is to say, probable cause.
Brewer Article
In "Criminal Procedure - The Automatic Standing Rule in Possession Cases is Overruled" by Timothy D. Brewer, from the Little Rock Law Review, discusses in detail a change in the standing rules for a defendant to challenge the constitutionality of a search, and criticizes those changes. But he also takes it for granted that there is no need for the prosecutor to demonstrate standing.
