Strawhats2000:
I think that what you may not be seeing is that there are sorta to different design problems/approaches here, which end up looking much alike but meet two different needs. As
Jayrod12 suggests, one issue is that the strip footing be able to bridge over (span over) soft spots in the soil, over its length of run. This favors the long rebars being in the bottom layer. And, we see plenty of cracked found. walls which indicate this should be considered; there has been some differential settlement (movement, bending) at soft spots. We seldom put longitudinal rebars in the tops of strip ftgs. at corners, but we often see differential settlement cracking at corners of the walls, which indicated maybe we should have. Alternatively, when the allowable soil bearing pressure is low and the wall loads are higher, this will cause you to need a wider strip ftg. to carry the loads. And, then the ftg. bending action perpendicular to the wall length will favor the short bars (perpendicular to the wall axis) being the bottom layer of rebars. Even so, I can put these short bars in as the upper layer, and just increase their size or reduce their spacing to accomplish the same design objective. And, this may have some constructability advantages in that you can support 2 or 3 of the long bars every 10’ and lay (and tie) the short bars on top of them, as apposed to having to hold the short bars up to tie them. It’s pretty much a matter of engineering judgement and experience, and your pictures and question don’t really show this aspect of the problem.