I don't think it is a bug. \left
and \right
constructs account for the size of content between them, whereas \bigl
and \bigr
are of predefined size. The l
and r
are to account for horizontal spacing. See herehere.
I think this question is better suited for tex.SEtex.SE.
This is the output from latex with and without exponentiation (which uses scriptsize
to change font size).